Motihari Brigade have dropped a massive, heavily distorted wrench into our algorithmically curated lives with their biting new single, "The Great Refusal." Preceding their upcoming full-length album, "Problematic," the track delivers exactly the brand of defiant "Rock-n-Roll Thoughtcrime" the band uses to shake independent minds awake. Deriving their name from George Orwell’s Indian birthplace, the group zeroes in on a very specific modern sickness:...

The first few notes of Megapenny Music’s single, "Across the Miles," feel less like an introduction and more like a resumption. There’s a quiet confidence here, a melody that seems to pick up a conversation left hanging four decades ago—a detail about the artist’s hiatus that you can’t help but feel in the song’s DNA. Delphine Savatte’s voice enters not with a bang, but...