Listening to John Keenan’s “Wreckage of the Past” feels like being handed the audio diary of a ghost who is not yet dead. This is an 18-song excavation of a psyche at war, made all the more intense by the knowledge that Keenan is the sole architect—producer, writer, mixer, and tormented protagonist. The whole project has the hermetically sealed, slightly feverish quality of a...

The new single from Quentin Moore, “Kiss Your Lips,” doesn’t so much start as it seeps into the room, lowering the lights and raising the temperature by a degree or two. Moore is at the piano, his vocals draping over the notes with the patient weight of heavy silk. The entire thing feels excavated from some lost '70s studio session, a slow jam built...