Listening to Elena C. Lockleis’s new single, “Mind - Vs. - Heart,” feels like witnessing a civil war fought entirely within a single nervous system. The sound is an intimate knot of pop architecture, the kind Julia Michaels patents in her sleep, where a confession arrives not as a ballad but as a skittish, rhythm-driven pulse. You feel the frantic heartbeat right there in...

Ghosting rarely gets the courtesy of a final scene. Steph Casey gives it one anyway, filling it with overdriven guitar, drums, split-octave vocals and a chorus ready to answer back. “10,000 Hail Marys” is a grunge-pop and punk-pop single about the guilt left behind when a relationship ends in disappearance. Casey makes the unanswered message move at full speed, turning frustration into release. The Kapiti Coast singer-songwriter...