Editor’s Note: Anyone who says there isn’t good music coming out these days — and quite literally, every day — simply isn’t paying attention. Vanyaland’s compilation feature The V List highlights the best in new music, both homegrown and national, over the past month, pulling together the sounds that have soundtracked the website in recent weeks. It’s all the stuff we’re bumping here at Vanyaland HQ, one new bop at a time.
Jane Remover, ‘JRJRJR’
The year ahead is already a wild one, so it’s fitting that our 2025 New Sounds series kicked off with Jane Remover’s propulsive new banger “JRJRJR.” The New Jersey artist dropped the track and video on New Year’s Day, and the goods hit collective V inboxes right on 12:01 a.m. That’s how you start the year. The kinetic digicore of “JRJRJR” is buoyed by elements of hyper-pop and hip-hop as Remover embraces new identities over a barrage of beats. Remover’s new whirlwind dose of whipsmart emotion is aided by a video directed by Parker Corey, and arrives with other pertinent news as well, including Remover’s forthcoming new album Revengeseekerz, released later this year via deadAir, and her headlining TURN UP OR DIE North American tour, which plays The Sinclair in Cambridge on May 2. The bass should ring out far beyond Harvard Square for that one.
Lutalo, ‘I Figured’
Move over gently Noah Kahan, there’s a new voice emerging from the scenic landscape of rural Vermont. It comes from indie singer-songwriter Lutalo, the multi-instrumentalist, producer, and Minnesota native who in January 7 released “I Figured,” a haunting fit of folk-ish post-punk that quickly follows last fall’s debut album The Academy. Lutalo, a cousin by marriage to Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker, recently shared stages with Interpol and Nilüfer Yanya, and “I Figured” shines a vibrant light on the rising artist, arriving ahead of a headlining North American tour that wraps February 14 at Radio Bean in Burlington.
The hazy daydream track showcases Lutalo’s commanding voice, a narrator in an over-arching storyline that is slowly beginning to unfurl. It examines the balance between lust and love and how it commands our next move, whether we realize it or not: “‘I Figured’ is about a ‘situationship’ that likely should not be, yet still find themselves coming back to each other,” Lutalo says. “There is a bit of resentment and tension between both people, but when it comes to turning each other down they still end up falling for each other. Maybe it’s love, maybe it’s lust. Even going as far as seeing ‘two elevens’ as a sign they should continue on this path.”
The Muder Capital, ‘The Fall’
“I can’t be told, I can’t be dressed, I can’t be held, I can’t be fed, I can’t be whipped.” That’s James McGovern breathlessly and brazenly in The Murder Capital’s new powderkeg tune “The Fall,” the Irish post-punk luminaries’ late-January entry and the first new music of 2025 and the latest chapter from their forthcoming third album Blindness. The new record is out February 21, and we’ve already absorbed a pair of Fall ’24 tracks, like the neon grayscale glow of “Can’t Pretend To Know” and the gritty, muck-fueled dirge of “Words Lost Meaning”, all harnessing the band’s growingly expansive cacophony. There’s a raw catharsis in these new tracks, and and we expect a full-on exhale of societal tension as The Murder Capital continue to soundtrack our lives on the brink. “‘The Fall’ is coming,” McGovern warns. “The Fall” has arrived.
Shura, ‘Recognise’
If it feels like forevher since we last heard from Shura, that’s because it pretty much has. Six years in this day and age is a damn eternity, and it’s been that long since the English alt-pop singer-songwriter and producer last sparked our personal soundtrack and gave us comfort in who we truly are. Shura returned in January with a glistening new synth track called “Recognise,” and it’s the first dose of sonic seduction from her forthcoming new album I Got Too Sad For My Friends, out May 30 via Play It Again Sam. The wonderfully dramatic and self-assured “Recognise” has us instantly falling back in love with one of our absolute fave artists over the past decade. And while it’s impossible to relay all the things that have happened since 2019, this feels like meeting up with an old friend and quickly rekindling the spark.
The track explores artistic identity and the selfishness of dreams before embracing life’s unpredictability, and the old notion that simple survival is success. “Arthur Russell sang ‘being sad is not a crime’ and yet somehow when I went through a period of despair in January I felt that the best course of action was to hide myself away from the world,” she offers. “I think ‘Recognise’ is a song about coming out the other side of that feeling. Slowly coming to the understanding that everything is ok. And that ok — is good. That I can sit quietly, read a book, sip a coffee and deeply appreciate being here and everything that has happened and has yet to happen…”
Korine, ‘Anhedonia’
Dark times call for dark-pop, and Korine are once again up to the task. The influential Philadelphia duo of Morgy Ramone and Trey Frye have continued to shape the vibe of our modern day’s convergence of darkwave, post-punk, and new wave, and in January dropped a heavenly beat for underground dance floors through a crystalline new single called “Anhedonia.” The searing single is the first taste of new album A Flame In The Dark, Korine’s fourth and first since 2023’s Tear, set for March 28 release via the always-essential Born Losers Records. Here’s what Korine have to say about it: “A depressive post-punk anthem, swirling with the woes of the world. An addictive riff accentuating feelings of general malaise and dissatisfaction. A fantasy of turning disgust into love like alchemy with sound.” If that doesn’t appeal to the core senses of 2025, and our efforts to combat the misery destined to soak society as a whole as we crawl back to the dark ages, then nothing will.