Listening to “Panic Buttons,” the new single from the resurrected rave act Joe Average, feels like finding a party invitation tucked inside a government-issued emergency broadcast. It arrives with a grin, not a grimace. Thirty-four years is a long time to be quiet, and the Brighton trio of Rich, Mad Mick, and Prof have clearly spent their time away pondering the best way to...

Blind Man’s Daughter has constructed something peculiar with the single “Harbor Boulevard,” a song that feels less like a piece of music and more like discovering a perfectly preserved room from a house that no longer exists. Ashley Wolfe’s project here builds a world with the clean, approachable architecture of country-pop, yet there’s a strange dust mote shimmer in the air—those cinematic flourishes—that catches...