"I'm sipping on your hidden stash of whiskey/A little drunker than you know," Jessie Baylin confesses with apt blurred enunciation in "Hurry Hurry." Actually, nothing moves fast in the music or the relationships on her third album. Baylin examines faltering affairs and resigns herself to a lot of waiting in a spacey kind of Dixie soul, like Portishead with a girlish Dusty Springfield at the mic. The effect, in "Joy Is Suspicious" and the title song, is both seductive and distant, as if she’s singing across miles of echo and doubt. This is an album of potent moods. But it would also be good to hear how Baylin, who is married to Kings of Leon drummer Nathan Followill, sounds when filled with joy.

Listen to "Hurry Hurry":

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• Photos: Random Notes

“The A Team”

This debut track from the then-20-year-old British singer-songwriter has a dark story behind it. Sheeran says he culls songwriting inspiration from "viewing other people's situations," which, for the heroine in "The A Team," involves drug addiction and prostitution that began as a teen. Sheeran paints the woman's trials with haunting imagery such as "But lately her face seems/Slowly sinking, wasting/Crumbling like pastries." "I did a gig at a homeless shelter, [and the song] is about one of the women there. It's her story," he said.