Robin James Hurt’s “A Song, A Story Told” arrives with a sound you can almost run a thumb over, like worn corduroy. In an age of sterile, diamond-polished productions, this album is a defiantly handmade thing, tracked onto vintage cassette machines. The result is not a flaw, but an ingredient. A faint, persistent hiss breathes alongside the instruments, a ghost in the machine who...

Surviving three brain surgeries and having to relearn how to walk would permanently stall almost any trajectory, but for Suriname-born, Tampa Bay-based Mr.D.Tunes, it was the exact friction needed to spark his contemplative new single, "Y You." The former junior Olympic swimmer turned youth mentor and Christian Hip-Hop artist channels his grim medical odds into an intensely honest rhythmic testimony. https://open.spotify.com/album/7b4Gn3WBmEYjw3p1bmCTiJ?si=HMBMixI6SvenjdfUJ2nIJA The melody operates on a...