Listening to John Keenan’s “Wreckage of the Past” feels like being handed the audio diary of a ghost who is not yet dead. This is an 18-song excavation of a psyche at war, made all the more intense by the knowledge that Keenan is the sole architect—producer, writer, mixer, and tormented protagonist. The whole project has the hermetically sealed, slightly feverish quality of a...

Milyam’s latest single "Intimacy" seeps out of the speakers like an expensive, custom fragrance slipping beneath a heavy velvet curtain. Drawing on a genuinely sophisticated aesthetic, she merges dark pop with the atmospheric crawl of deep house to chart entirely new territory for R&B. The low-end groove hits with tremendous physical weight. It throbs. It paces the room. Riding just above that heavy pulse...