Some love songs sit politely in the corner. "When I'm With You" walks in with bright guitars, a racing heart, and that slightly ridiculous confidence people get when a crush rewires their whole day. Nick Pappalardo's new single, takes its spark from his early gigging days in Brooklyn and NYC, where one meeting with a Brooklyn girl gave him the emotional fuel for a full-on...

You hear the first strike of the drum and instantly know this is not a history lesson. Folk music often gets treated with too much reverence, placed carefully on a pedestal where no one can touch it. Remon Nakanishi takes a completely different approach. He grabs these centuries old communal songs, drags them into the studio, and surrounds them with some of the most infectious...