Coin’s Rainbow Mixtape, a three-part EP series fused into one full-length effort, is in the running for the year’s best indie album, a powerfully written kaleidoscope of reflections on finding your way through love, loss, and your own meaning of life. It’s hard to pick the record’s standout moment, but “You Are the Traffic” feels like the one song that pulls it all together, a mellow realization that two people — maybe lovers, maybe friends, likely something in between — are forever connected, whether they’d prefer to be untangled or not. “What a mistake, how there’s no me without you,” singer Chase Lawrence confesses. Like the song itself, the line rings with a faint sliver of hope: Even in this misfortune, maybe the two can find a way out. —Terron Moore
