Listening to Arnold J.’s new single, "Muddy Waters," isn't quite like anything else swirling around right now. It arrives with the gentle insistence of incoming tide, pulling you into its specific gravity. Arnold J., Ghanaian-born and now Canada-based, weaves a sound tagged as alt-country and folk, but those labels feel thin, like trying to contain smoke. There’s earthiness, sure, but his soulful vocal lines...

GISKE’s "The Sound of Birdsong" doesn’t so much begin as it seeps into the room, like the pale, perpetual twilight of a Norwegian summer night where sleep feels like a theoretical concept. This is a song for the space between the last page of a book and turning off the light; a four-minute float in that strange, conscious stillness when the world is quiet...