Sophia Mengrosso’s new album, “Unforgiven”, doesn’t so much start as it does detonate, a thirteen-song treatise on survival. Her voice, a thing clearly trained for gilded halls and velvet curtains, instead wails from within a foundry’s clang and fire. The result is a bizarre and beautiful collision, the sonic equivalent of discovering a lost Caravaggio painting lit by a flickering fluorescent tube in a...

Blending Malay and English lyrics, Shahera Sam delivers a heartfelt single "Kenapa (Why)" that explores life’s questions through the sounds of Southeast Asia. Shahera Sam from Kuala Lumpur turns personal questions into musical poems in her first song, "Kenapa (Why)". The song is a big step forward for the up-and-coming Malaysian artist. She wrote the reflective words when she was 17 years old, with only a...