Take Jack Horton, a Portland-based singer-songwriter whose path to folk-Americana included stops at Japanese law school, Tokyo piano bars, corporate boardrooms, and government offices. His latest EP, "Imperfections," feels like finding someone's private journal set to music. And that someone happens to write really, really well. The five-song collection opens with "Set Me Free," a piano-driven confession that might surprise anyone expecting typical breakup bitterness. Horton...

Rosso Tierney unpacks a profound psychological weight on his new alternative metal single, "This Gun". Honestly, the track immediately pinned me to my chair. Tierney operates as a completely self-contained unit here, handling vocals, piano, guitar, and bass, and he uses that total control to build an impossibly dense, aggressive wall of sound. There is a relentless, heavily distorted thundering down in the low-end...