In the month of December, on Scotland's west coast, one experiences a certain degree of quietness compared with the previous summer months.

When "Just Like Me" begins playing, the room gets colder because of the song's emotional impact. Before you understand it, you have already felt it.

Just before the piano plays the first note of "Dead End," the air in the room drops. You can feel it in your wrists first. We've all experienced that feeling; the silence is thin, buzzing in your ears, while your mind runs through a thousand thoughts, but your body is done.

You can feel El Drifte's presence before he gets into the venue. The room shifts as soon as he enters with his coat and the outside cold comes in and after the door closes, the cold is gone and there is warmth again.

In the "before" you have hot Texas days. Days that are ordinary and stretched out in thin wispy small minutes on the clock; Days with a guitar resting on the wall in a position of authority, like some old man glaring down at you.

There is a brief moment, before all of the voices begin to settle down into your chest and all of the music starts playing, that you feel as if you're losing your breath.

You can picture a moment years from now with Amber Jade Smith at home on her couch taking notes or writing, watching TV without distraction.

Yo-Blake didn't show up with a bang; he was just another one that showed up with pressure. With Static in the Chest. With others' opinions rattling in his head like empty beer bottles hitting a concrete driveway.

Before the world turns back to the light, there is a time when it seems the only way you can breathe is if you are breathing the air that comes from a can of beer while taking a deep breath with your chest, when you remember the scent of wet concrete, and when you are reminded of how hot it is to drink something cold.

Just like many other major characters in literature, the heroine of Ava Valianti's song "Hot Mess" enters the story via an admission rather than through violence.

The songs by Chloe Hawes have always been about someone trying to make sense of all the chaos from partying hard, being out too much living in crappy places, and dealing with the mental anguish they have experienced while growing up in a dysfunctional household.

As the band walks through the door they approach the warmth and comfort of analogue tape. Initially a slow and slightly staticy buildup, but eventually there’s a sudden explosion of energy in the room.

With Not My First Emotional Rodeo, Janet Devlin widens, deepens, and complicates the texture of her voice as it has always been; soft around the edges, sharp where it counts, like beer foam drops on concrete or a spark flicks off of ash.

When ENAVE walks into a room, ENAVE comes to exist in the room. When there is static flowing under concrete it’s the same feeling. A drunken night having beer and then hearing parts of what you did not know the night actually were.

Alex Riddle's writing style continues to be characterized by a sense of urgency that restricts his emotional processing and creative expression; however, with the release of Evelyn's first single, Grace - Act One, he has been liberated from this limitation.

While the latest single from Clinton Belcher, "Save Me From Myself," doesn't have a very distinct lyrical quality to it, you can certainly feel the weight of the song before actually hearing any of the lyrics.

Mardi Gras has never come across as a band that intends to fit in the marketplace. They have always chosen to play by their own rules: beer-stained rehearsal spaces, concrete floors, and the familiar moan of static in the monitors—a legacy defined by grit, not shine.

The latest single from Amelina titled "A New Year Wish" scintillates brilliantly and buzzes with the same holiday static we have all heard before, that space between hope and fear, silently live fireworks and the silence just before they go off.

Lola Wild enters a room much like one of her songs enters the chest—hesitantly at first, and then quickly scintillates to sharpness, like the sound of static crackling across an old radio.

Shelita has a way of singing that feels like someone opening a window in a room you didn’t realize had gone stuffy. Her new single, “I’m So In Love With You,” carries that same sensation—warm air, soft light, a little bit of static, like an old radio crackling back to life.