Emily AF, the brains behind Rockstar & Elise—a solo project that sounds like an 80s jukebox exploded and then reassembled itself with bluegrass banjos and industrial-strength glue—has dropped a new single. What do we make of Emily, a veteran sound engineer moonlighting as a nostalgia pop siren? Fascinating, no? https://open.spotify.com/track/0F3jvbRRXTY9pcAaFarsLp?si=NVgBtC4eQ12KlOj6nEkXGw "Cruel Summer - Emily AF Version," explores a sizzling, dangerous liaison. A clandestine connection where the...

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...