Corbie Hill

“Use a Friend,” off Josh Halper’s new Schlemiel, sounds huge, but it’s the size of the space between two people. Sonically, it’s a driving space-rock anthem in the War on Drugs vein. Drum machines and a drum set propel keyboards, guitars and a pedal steel forward at

“The Music Man,” the lead single from the new David Ramirez, opens with an ode to the Walkman. Ramirez describes his younger self—innocent, free of existential dread—blindsided by mind-altering wonder when his dad gave him one. “The wheels began to turn / the magnets both took control,” Ramirez sings

The new Jason Boland and the Stragglers album closes with an image right out of Steinbeck: “Lonesome travelers and rambling types / shuffling down some unknown trail tonight,” Boland sings in “Buffalo Return,” penned by late Oklahoma songwriter Jimmy LaFave. “In your hobo jungles and your boxcar dreams / living only by

Somewhere in his native South Carolina, the Oregon-based Cuchulain—who makes music under that mononym—met his someone special. Still fresh-faced and young, they stayed up late all summer, getting wasted to college radio: “Rolled in the grass in late July / we watched the dance of the fireflies,” Cuchulain sings