Listening to Libby Ember’s single “Alibi” is a study in strange emotional temperatures. The sound is a down-tempo, sun-dusted blanket of soft guitars and gentle synth pads, the kind of arrangement you’d put on to feel safe. But the feeling it leaves behind is a deep, architectural cold, the kind you find in the shadowed corners of an old stone church long after the...

Bottara did not rush Bit Longer into the feed. She carried the song for years, took it from London to Los Angeles, and kept returning until the record could hold her earlier and present selves in the same frame. That patience gives this Bottara single review its hook. The track is not framed as a glossy debut-day rush. It is a held glance, a groove...