It’s a tale as old as…well, just a couple of years, really. Pop rock band Watashi Wa started teasing a reunion a few years ago, and then the world shut down in the wake of a global pandemic. But now, on the other side, one of the darlings of Tooth & Nail’s EMI era has finally returned after sixteen years, rejoining the label for their long-awaited “sixth” album, People Like People.

For those who may be new to Watashi Wa, they started as a Noggin Toboggan-esque punk band on Bettie Rocket Records, only to switch to a fantastic pop-influenced alt rock sound for their original (and short) Tooth & Nail tenure...

Sometimes a good pop song can be just what is needed on a long day. Much like a carbonated drink on a sweltering summer afternoon, a smooth pop song can hit just right. With that image in mind, Tulsa, Oklahoma's Stars Go Dim has been spinning out well-crafted pop rock songs for more than 15 years now (both as an independent and major label band) and their latest, the fizzy and heartfelt Grace In The Wilderness, is just the kind of carbonated album that delivers songs that go down easy and refresh the soul...

Worship mainstay Hillsong UNITED (now known simply as UNITED), is back in 2022 with their newest full-length studio offering titled, Are We There Yet? Said to be a collection of songs that “embodies the feeling of 'all this future,'" primary songwriter and lead singer Joel Houston continues explaining, “It is heavily entrenched in realizing... and repositioning heaven with songs birthed from a place of knowing that this part of the story is not the main part, and we have the gift of joy that is heaven no matter what our human experience is now.”

So what of the execution of this stated goal? How would Houston and Company choose to sonically convey these messages of hope with a preponderance on heaven? The answer is nuanced, and lies largely in the...

Brandon Heath, who might just be CCM's most relatable and personable hitmaker, seems to have trouble picking a lane. When the singer-songwriter released Blue Mountain ten years ago, it seemed like a "eureka!" moment of self-discovery; it was the perfect culmination of everything Heath had released up to that point, and the Americana-tinged folk pop sounded like the genre Heath would call home for the foreseeable future. The past decade panned out quite differently. 2015's No Turning Back was similar to Blue Mountain, but it shied away from that album's darker and more conceptual leanings...