Houston-based psych-rock duo The Shrubs return with "Let Us In", a frantically catchy single that basically sugarcoats a societal breakdown in layers of infectious fuzz. https://open.spotify.com/album/4DHZnz49JHoaX6Ce0uAdd6?si=xvATg3GHRyS6lHn1pLjiNw Miguel and Sophie have a fascinating knack for dragging fifty-year-old analog reel-to-reels and gritty cassettes into modern digital landscapes. Here, they have engineered a massive, heavily distorted wall of sound that races forward with a sweaty, desperate urgency. You catch...

Some doors do not close with a slam. They remain half-open, daring a person to walk back through them after the room behind them has grown small and airless. The past can be persuasive that way. It offers familiar furniture, old names, a version of comfort that asks too much in return. "Backwards, Baby," the latest single from Caitlin Kent-Halliday, begins from that human pressure...