The first encounter with Asta Bria’s new single, “Dragonfly,” is a calculated disorientation. For an artist who once cozied up to funk’s leisurely sway, this is a sharp turn onto a rain-slicked digital highway. The song’s intent for the dance floor is immediately apparent; a commanding, four-to-the-floor beat acts as a gravitational field, pinning you to the present moment. But hovering just above it...

She Becomes’ new single, “Necromancer”, has left me thinking less about music and more about the strange inscriptions one finds on very old gravestones. It’s a track that hangs in the air like November fog, built on guitars that feel like they’ve been dragged through damp, loamy soil and a bassline that has the coiled-up energy of a minor character in a Brontë novel,...