Casey McQuillen’s single “Better” arrives not with a bang, but with the quiet, decisive click of a well-made lock securing a door. It’s pop music, certainly, groomed and gleaming, yet beneath the surface bubbles a fierce kind of self-possession that’s less about demanding attention and more about curating who gets past the velvet rope of your own contentment. Coming from someone known for empowerment...

With his new single, “I Can Tell,” Brendan Pegg documents not the loud crash of a relationship’s end, but the awful, held-breath silence just before. This is a song that understands the atmospheric pressure drop that precedes a storm, the chilling moment you realize an unspoken truth has settled in the space between two bodies on a couch. Pegg’s voice isn’t performing for an...