Mike Stewart Theory’s new single, “It Reaches Us,” feels less like a piece of music and more like a strange meteorological event happening inside your head. You’re immediately dropped into a groove that has the smooth, shoulder-rolling confidence of 80s soul, but something is off in the atmosphere. The air is thick with a psychedelic haze, a sense of temporal displacement that is both...

When the lone-wolf empath Thomas, recording under the Beyond Signal moniker, finally unleashed his debut album “Gaia Algorithmica”, it forced an immediate confrontation with the digital glare constantly humming in our periphery. Thomas approaches his craft as a solo singer-songwriter championing neurodivergence and existential authenticity, weaving his lifelong angst into a self-invented genre he dubs Transcendental Indie Music. This blend of post-punk, electronica, and...