Adventures in Real Time by Dylan Gardner:

In the desperate search for some music that resembles summertime, Adventures in Real Time gave me something to sing along to.  Adventures of Real Time is a lively, upbeat album that has a distinct “Top 40” feel, where any song could be taken and overplayed until its lyrics are spamming twitter feeds and instagram captions, but it’s still good.  The album features “Let’s Get Started” and “I Think I’m Falling For Something,” which have become my favorite songs of Dylan Gardner’s, just because they’ve been stuck in my head and I don’t hate them after the hundreds of times that I’ve heard them.  While Adventures of Real Time is an overall great album, I would not have added “The Actor” to the track list, because it shows how the label tried to overspread Gardner’s voice into multiple genres, which he cannot handle vocally.  For anyone used to listening to his music, “The Actor” is not a good song to stumble across because it gives an artificial feel to Gardner’s music.  But if you liked Adventures in Real Time, then listen to “Bright” by Echosmith.

“Room 93” by Halsey:

“Room 93” is another indie EP that I’ve been playing nonstop–and with good reason too. Halsey’s music is alluring, pulling you into the reality of a mistaken relationship and the consequences that come with it.  The EP includes five songs by the artist that all have a relatively close feel to each other, so you don’t become startled as one song branches out of another with Halsey’s slow, calm voice.  Out of the five songs, the one that was the most memorable was “Is There Somewhere,” which portrays a story about an accidental encounter and then the mistake of falling in love.  Halsey’s soft, emotion-filled voice really reaches out to you when she asks, “Can we pretend that we’re in love,” making you feel heartbroken, just like her.  Her music is different from the typical artist, in that one of her songs has gone mainstream; “Ghost” has made its way to the top of the Billboard Top 100, but the EP still hasn’t gone viral.  Another one of her unmistakable songs is “Hurricane,” which explains her empowerment as she sings, “Don’t belong to no city, don’t belong to no man.” Personally, I’ve fallen in love with Halsey’s music, just because of her so-called “feminist flair,” which should be accepted as normal.  If you fell in love with Halsey’s music, like I did, then you should check out the cover of “Crazy in Love” by Sofia Karlberg.  Both artists incorporate a slow tempo and drastic synthesizers to accent their music.