DBsock, the artistic moniker of Mingwei Gao, arrives not with a gentle announcement, but with a complex, shifting statement in her debut EP, "The Journey". The songs on this album do not really feel like easy music. Instead, they feel more like a complicated guide that shows the way through internal territories. Gao is a singer, musician, producer, and creator who works in Los Angeles and...

Listening to Brandon White’s new single, “BiG FiSH”, is to understand a very specific, architectural kind of pressure. It’s the feeling of having shoulders too broad for the doorway, a voice too resonant for the room. White articulates not just the frustration of being a large talent in a small scene, but the creeping paranoia that comes when the pond life starts to nibble,...