Listening to RIOT SON’s new single, “Loneliest at Best,” is a curious exercise in emotional time-travel. The sound pulls you back to the early 2000s, to a time of angular guitars and heartfelt, frayed-collar vocals. It has that nervous, shimmering energy of indie rock that always sounded best on a pair of wired headphones, the beat prodding you forward even as the lyrics confess...

The arrival of Puck's debut single, "Caricature," feels less like a release and more like a jailbreak. From the opening crackle, this is a song that’s been chewing on its own chains for some time. Galway's five-piece racket-makers have bottled a very specific kind of frenetic energy, the kind you get from too much coffee and staring at a flickering screen until society starts...