“My Dead End Self” begins with technological reminiscence. The stillness around me is filled with the recognizable yet abrasive sound of a skipping CD. I am briefly teleported back to my childhood, recalling the countless hours spent playing the same albums on a purple boombox until they too developed that eerie but familiar skip. However, as the song continues, I am jerked from my reverie and tactfully reminded that, for all intents and purposes, CDs are extinct. We live in an age where music is produced, consumed and promoted on the internet, and the band Dirty Nice couldn't be any more aware of this phenomenon.

If the Talking Heads were a product of the late 2010s as opposed to the mid-1970s, they would probably sound just like Dirty Nice.With a sound that pays homage to previous new wave artists through skilled sampling and synthesizing, “My Dead End Self” is hauntingly existential, yet ironically emotive—"All I need in these dead-end times is a place to live my dead-end life." The track and its accompanying music video pulse with an impending sense of doom and engage in a one-way conversation with what seems to be the end of the world. While the track itself is only three and a half minutes, its message is profound and long-lasting, giving you something to think about long after the sound fades into the atmosphere.

Orion Sun creates gorgeous energy in her latest single “Ne Me Quitte Pas (Don’t Leave Me)." The singer, also known as Philadelphia-based Tiffany Majette, crafts a track filled with loving and deliberate harmonies that surround the listener in a warm embrace. The hook repeats, “It feels so good to know ya / It feels so damn good to know ya,” reminiscent of the feeling of being in love for the first time with someone new. Majette’s smooth voice radiates a calm storm—soft sentiments wrapped up in honest words that are as awe-inspiring as they are relatable. The production has a vintage feel at the start, calling back to other songs of the same title while still owning its unique sound and meaning. As Majette’s collection of songs continues to grow this year, we can look forward to more soul healing hits like this one. In the meantime you can check out her amazing first album A Collection of Fleeting Moments and Daydreams and her self-produced music video for “Ne Me Quitte Pas (Don’t Leave Me)."

“I was gifted a book by somebody who loved me / About a man who got even with God,” sings David Keenan, and then the story begins to unravel. In “Unholy Ghosts,” a standout track from his latest album, A Beginner’s Guide to Bravery, we follow Keenan through meetings with a one-eyed tramp and a drunkard playing a wooden piano, his turns of phrase and run-on sentences treating the listener to vivid imagery developing patiently. “I wrote this song on a train from Amsterdam to Cologne, finished it as the train ceased to move, brought it in me to a Chapel in Cologne, sang it for the first time, left the Chapel with a liberated German bible under my arm as a souvenir,” he wrote in a Facebook post, demonstrating that his daily life is as fanciful and his daily speech as poetic as his songwriting. A comparison to Glen Hansard is almost too easy, but not unfair to either party, both fitting the mold of buskers with ideas too big for their streetcorners. The arrangement of “Unholy Ghosts” is booming, nearly to the point of spilling over, but beneath it all we hear David Keenan for who he is: an ambitious musician shouting his heart out.

It must be daunting to be related to the composer of some of the world’s most memorable melodies. If intimidated, Ethan Gruska,grandson of famed film composer John Williams, doesn’t show it. Already making a name for himself as a producer, “Enough for Now” is a welcome insight into his identity as a songwriter, while showing off his obvious production talents. Little instrumental nuggets, like that unmistakable trill of a violin, remind us that Gruska co-produced Phoebe Bridgers’ earthquake debut, Stranger in the Alps. Whereas that album’s strongest moments lie in its sonic subtlety, Gruska, in an in-studio video, compliments the track’s renowned producer, Tchad Blake, on his ability to make songs “aggressively come through the speakers.” The relentless drum patch, either digital or an intentional imitation, harkens back to The Postal Service, whose debut album’s title, Give Up, shares a sarcastic resignation with Gruska’s lyrics. “Maybe I’ll try / Maybe I’ll die trying,” he sings, enlisting the help of Bridgers herself. Tapping into the same nostalgia as Bleachers or Stranger Things, Gruska sees this solo effort as a success, telling Stereogum, “It has that irreverence I wanted, despite its sweetness.”

Anaïs Mitchell has an uncanny ability to bring new life to old stories. Fresh off of a Best Musical win at the Tonys for Hadestown, a retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, she wasted no time before embarking on her next project. Bonny Light Horseman, a collaboration with Eric D. Johnson (known for his work in Fruit Bats and formerly The Shins) and Josh Kaufman (known for his work in countless critical indie darlings like The National and The Hold Steady), uses traditional folk songs as a jumping-off point for lush ballads that could find a home on an album by any one of the group’s innumerable associated acts. Their latest, “The Roving,” is a well-executed entry into the modern tradition of indie-folk, but elements of it stem from centuries ago. Of their process, Johnson joked, “These 500-year-old lyrics are so deeply applicable. ‘The Roving’ could be the plot of an ‘80s teen movie… How incredible is it that as humans we still just want to love and have sex and feel sad and fight?” The group’s debut album, due out January 24th, began and was mostly completed at the 37d03d event hosted by Justin Vernon, Aaron Dessner and friends. They, along with even more members of the April Base extended family, appear on Bonny Light Horseman’s collection of “semi-trad folk jams,” modernized with Mitchell’s signature touch - “We added a singalong chorus so everyone could bond about this.”

In "Anywhere," a track off her late-summer debut Sensitive Soul, London native Hope Tala explores growth with a sweet vulnerability and timbre as unique as her sound. Hope's music is real and open, provoking thought and relating to familiar circumstances. Confessional lyrics, "I haven't felt this way since high school / I'm sorry, I know you feel lied to / I can't explain it but I tried to give you the words / You said through my hands when I fly with the birds," display both an admirable self-awareness and a poetic handling of emotion in a song about a relationship coming to an end. With jazzy ad-libs, her clear vocals float over other lyrics detailing the ways a relationship feels alive in the face of one that no longer does. Her distinct fusion of R&B beats and bossa nova instrumentation, self-coined as R&Bossa by the artist herself, makes "Anywhere" as delightful to listen to as a day on a beach in Rio.