Some songs show up at the right time. Not because they have all the answers, but because they remind you you’re not alone in asking the questions. “Brave,” the new single from Rudy Nuño featuring Aimee Interrupter, is one of those songs. At its core, “Brave” is about hope in difficult moments, the kind that doesn’t ignore what’s going on, but still believes things can get better. It doesn’t try to hype anything up or pretend everything’s fine. Instead, it sits with the realit

There’s a certain kind of songwriter who never seems interested in being “next.” No rush toward relevance, no algorithm chasing, no attempt to sound like whatever moment they’re supposedly meant to fit into. Sam Russo  has always lived in that space, quietly defiant, deeply human, and steadily carving out something that feels truer with every release. Hold You Hard , Russo’s fourth full-length for Red Scare Industries , finds him widening the frame without losing the focus. F

There are bands that grow older, and there are bands that simply grow truer. The Smith Street Band has always belonged to the latter category. From the first chorus of Once I Was Wild, it’s clear they’re not trying to reinvent themselves so much as refine the storm, to take every cracked voice, every bruised lyric, every stubborn ounce of hope, and hammer it into something sharper, heavier, and impossibly more human. Where past records have sprawled, sometimes messy in the wa