Few artists possess the peculiar alchemy required to make existential dread sound utterly beguiling, and even fewer can make it look the part too. Valerie Forgione, the creative force behind Lovina Falls, has always possessed that peculiar alchemy—the ability to transmute life's darker frequencies into something approaching transcendence. On "Light and Low," her first offering of 2025, she's done it again, though this time with an urgency that feels distinctly of the moment.

Watching an artist shed their skin proves rather touching business. Amit Vyas, the Jodhpur-born guitarist who trades under the moniker Maluscomas, has spent the better part of his recording career thus far wrestling with the considerable shadow of his prog-rock forebears—particularly the looming spectre of Pink Floyd that so thoroughly dominated his 2022 concept album "The Other Side of Peace." On his latest single, "Lost in This Feeling," however, we find him stepping cautiously but decisively into more intimate territory.