Kent Owens, a name that sounds like it should be on a library card next to “Hemingway,” but instead it's on the digital shelf next to my slightly messy playlist. This Cambridge-based creator of soundscapes – I’m resisting calling them songs, but…well – just released “Fade Away,” a single that feels like an open window after a long winter. It’s a soft rock hum...

The Texas country and Americana singer-songwriter Celeste Marie Wilson frames resilience, sisterhood, and southern poetry with a voice rooted in Gulf Coast memory. There are trees in Southern music that do far heavier work than scenery. Oaks keep family secrets. Pines mark county roads. Willows bend, grieve, shade, and somehow remain. In “Willow,” Celeste Marie Wilson reaches for that image with the calm nerve of a...