Listening to Arnold J.’s new single, "Muddy Waters," isn't quite like anything else swirling around right now. It arrives with the gentle insistence of incoming tide, pulling you into its specific gravity. Arnold J., Ghanaian-born and now Canada-based, weaves a sound tagged as alt-country and folk, but those labels feel thin, like trying to contain smoke. There’s earthiness, sure, but his soulful vocal lines...

Seven Shades of Nothing’s new single, “When The Lights Go Down,” offers an incredibly peculiar form of comfort—it’s a soundtrack for deciding, over your third cup of lukewarm coffee, that perhaps global, society-dissolving collapse might actually be a blessed relief. James Cole, the project’s architect, doesn't sound panicked about the approaching end; he sounds incredibly, beautifully bored by everything that led up to it. https://open.spotify.com/album/0Z5K652TNvuB9fpt9Amdut?si=_mevo7tcSGunNpswpfCSsQ This...