"Who the fuck is Lauren Ruth Ward?” reads the descriptive text teasing the 31-year-old American singer and guitarist’s website. Ward is a firecracker, a Scorpio, a water sign. What do Maggie Rogers, Father John Misty, and Lauren Ruth Ward have in common? Their voices read like anachronisms, under-processed, floral, not limited to modernity or copying what came before. They make music that’s difficult to place but electric to absorb. What’s more, all three artists hail from Maryland, a state that isn’t classically associated with rock music, and one that also happens to be where I grew up. On the Mason-Dixon line, this is a place where country music is charred with a rock sensibility, or in the case of Ward, rock is infused with a smokey folk flavor. Prior to moving to Los Angeles, Ward, who rocks Angel Olsen bangs and tie-dye hair, worked as a hairdresser in her native town of Baltimore. “Water Sign” is a song that you feel throughout your whole body. “I'm living in my personal hell / I don't need your ammunition / Everybody say ‘Oh, I can tell’ / Can only see my own vision,” drawing out the last syllables into a growl. Ward sings of emotional volatility: being vulnerable to the moods and actions of people trying to swerve into her left lane. Single lines speak volumes, with punctuated pauses and Ward’s sharp tongue (“I did it my sentence it was cruel but I finished it”). If you’re in New York, don’t miss Ward’s upcoming show at Rough Trade in April.

The Districts can easily be seen as a welcome addition to the trend of Philadelphia indie rockers who play a little more noisily than their Brooklyn or LA contemporaries. They’re in good company with bands like Hop Along and Restorations, who shout over as many as three guitars at a time but use a brighter emotional palette than anger alone. “Hey Jo,” the first single from their upcoming album You Know I’m Not Going Anywhere, is a more delicate song, more coming-of-age than teenage angst. Singer Rob Grote explores his falsetto as he confronts bucked expectations, asking a friend, “How’s Los Angeles? Have you seen any stars? Does the sunshine get old?” Those opening questions are symbolic of the larger confusion within the song of, as Grote explains, “relationships unfurling amidst the dysphoria of the modern world.” “We are all imperfect products of the natural world,” he continues, “and more specifically, products of our own mind.” You can almost hear the strain in his voice, not accustomed to singing so high, so quietly or so tenderly, as he addresses his own internal struggles and tries “to be something more perfect, gentle, and beautiful.”

LA-based singer-songwriter Adam Melchor’s “I Choose You” proclaims an all-encompassing love. The song is an off-kilter, technicolor daydream for your ears—full of raucous voices. It wobbles through perfectly depicting the absent-mindedness that can accompany the obsession of new love as Melchor sings, “used to always say I was good with people’s names / now I’ve forgotten everyone’s and you’re to blame.” Produced by Ethan Gruska, Andrew Sarlo, and John Debold, the track is layered with elaborate sounds that never drown out Melchor’s sweetly melodic voice. Both the production and lyrics are a celebration of the knot in your stomach you feel when you like someone so much you can barely breathe or think whenever you're around them. Melchor leans into the idea that love is a game of chance, and finding your one person is as much luck as it is anything else, “I choose you / out of billions of people / we got it down to two.” ”I Choose You” rounds out a busy year for Melchor—having released his sophomore EP Plan On You in the spring followed by the single “Joyride” this fall.

Awash in softness, “To Philly” by Del Water Gap begins with gentle guitar strums, emotional vocals and simple, heartache-y lyrics. The simplicity is overwhelming, evoking so much while saying so little. "To Philly" sounds like a memory; lyric by lyric, pluck by pluck, the vocals melt together to tell a story of love, loss and something bittersweet. Though they start similarly, the single and music video diverge in sound; the track itself picks up, while the video stays soft and slow. As the drumbeat introduces itself, the song gains momentum and carries on with energy, before slowly coming to a close. The video, on the other hand, stays low throughout in a lovely way. The acoustic is strummed slower and the vocals are sung softer, as the music emerges with an aura of tenderness and intimacy. Strung together with snippets of footage, the home video layers the fleeting moments of life over the subtlety of the track, creating something altogether beautiful. Bask in the gorgeous croons of Del Water Gap at The Wild Honey Pie’s next NY dinner party, happening November 19 at Le Fanfare, and keep your ears open for his newest EP, Alive from Fresno out November 22 via Terrible Records.

After touring together this summer, Brooklyn’s No Vacation and Nashville’s Okey Dokey return with a collaborative shoegaze track called “Really Truly.” After Sab Mai (No Vacation) sets the stage over a sleepy bass-anchored groove, Aaron Martin (Okey Dokey) hooks you with his falsetto delivery of what turns out to be the track’s mantra: Now that everything’s faded, you figured it out. As the two groups continue to dip deeper into the groove they’ve built together, a call and response eventually leads into what sounds like the hypnotizing feeling of sitting in a 3 am subway train. Zooming beneath the East River on the way back to Brooklyn, the guitar riffs bring you in and out of a half-sleep. Lines from the tunnel lights flash at a steady 70 bpm. What a relief: the night went well. And in that timeless moment, the thing that’s been bugging you all week—you realize you figured it out.

Many beloved bands, from The Staves to The Wombats, have their roots in the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, a school founded by none other than Paul McCartney. Musicians from Norway, Ireland and Brazil met at the renowned institution to form All We Are, returning with their newest single, “L Is For Lose.” The track is described best by the director of its music video, Jack Whitely, who said that he “imagined a hot Miami night where the band plays characters caught up in an 80s crime love triangle, before the funk drops and they settle their differences on the dancefloor.” That seedy underbelly of a Tarantino universe meets tongue-in-cheek goofiness in the video, but also the sounds of the song itself. The backbone is an effortlessly funky groove, but All We Are takes painstaking efforts to scuff up that sheen with wordless yells and a test broadcast vocal breakdown, something The Flaming Lips might do to an Electric Guest beat.

Greek electronic-pop artist Σtella’s newest single “Monster” contemplates whether we should love or fight our inner demons. Despite its dark title, the track is light and airy with joyously rhythmic synths that pair perfectly with Σtella’s smooth vocals. The monster she sings about is not something to be feared, but rather something to be understood and possibly even accepted. Sometimes the hardest person to love and to forgive is yourself, but Σtella leans into this possibility as she sings, “love the monster inside / I’ll forgive you now cause you’re ready.” The introspective track is melancholic in its optimism, but it leans into a belief that perhaps the key to becoming the best version of ourselves is to accept the pieces we are not as proud of. “Monster” is the latest track off of Σtella’s upcoming album The Break, which comes out January 24th.