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.
Total Wife, ‘make it last’
For some, there was something so erotic about those early, sound-shaping shoegaze records, when putting on my bloody valentine or Slowdive set a certain mood that other genres simply could not. Nashville experimental duo Total Wife are tapping into that sense of overstimulation with “make it last,” a revved-up fit of noisy pull-and-release from Luna Kupper and Ash Richter that sets up September record Come Back Down. The celestial track dropped mid-month via Philadelphia label Julia’s War Recordings, and here’s what Richter has to say about it: “‘make it last’ started as kind of a horny song,” says vocalist and lyricist Ash Richter. “I was experimenting with lyric writing that felt a little less serious or sappy, but the more I worked through it, the more it kind of ended up as a love song to the road, or like an ode to time passing veiled by the excitement of living. When overwhelming euphoria removes you from your surroundings and sense of time.” We need that now more than ever.
Coach Party, ‘Do It For Love’
At this point, we’re pretty much all doing it for the love of the game. And indie bands are no exception, providing a soundtrack to this fucked up way of life (gestures around towards *everything*) while desperately attempting to stay afloat — mentally, emotionally, and financially — themselves. Coach Party have distilled this sentiment into a raucous new single called “Do It For Love,” a frenzied fit of electro alt-pop that serves as the lead track to the Isle of Wight band’s forthcoming September album Caramel. ‘”Do It For Love’ is a song about the realities of being a working-class band — the endless grind, the expectations to give everything while being offered so little in return,” says vocalist Jess Eastwood. “It’s a track that speaks to the passion that keeps artists moving forward despite the weight of it all: Doing it for love, even when the cost is high.” That should speak for all of us.
bloodsports, ‘Calvin’
Bloodsports, the album, will always be the one where Suede got their mojo back. bloodsports, the band, is currently the group that’s helping us get through this miserable week. Where the New York City band goes from here is anyone’s guess, but t we’re feeling the ever-loving fuck outta the buzzy foursome’s incendiary new single “Calvin,” and not just because it vibes hard with Massachusetts’ most notable indie band. “It’s definitely the most standard ‘rock’ song on the record, it kinda feels like a Pixies song to us,” bandleader Sam Murphy of the crunchy alt-rock cruiser. “This one was written in like an hour with a couple of simple riffs I had in my head for awhile and really hasn’t changed since. Lyrically, it takes place during a dream I had so a lot of the lines are kind of disjointed from one another and ambiguous, which I think reflects a dream state pretty well.” It’s certainly loud enough to wake us the fuck up. “Calvin” and all its 102 seconds of noisy fury, will be featured on debut album Anything Can Be A Hammer, out October 17 on upstart NYC/Nashville indie label Good English Records. Color us all sorts of intrigued.
Wyldest, ‘After The Ending’
This unblessed 2025 may have come and gone without a traditional Song of the Summer (sorry, Sabrina), but Wyldest is ensuring the Post-Apocalyptic Pop Song of the Summer sweepstakes are in full bloom. And perhaps the winning entry comes from the London project of Zoë Mead, who delivers a lucid alt-indie lullaby called “After The Ending,” which dances in our headspace with delicate ease and heavy grandeur, reflecting how DIY guitar-pop used to sound in the age just before streaming. “‘After the Ending’ is a post-apocalyptic pop song,” Wyldest says, “about sustaining love from one existence to the next; ‘The moment, we lost it / So I’ll find you, after the ending’. It was written with space and time in mind — a scenario whereby a relationship can’t exist in the present reality, perhaps due to life circumstances, timing, or something more extreme, like separation by death — and the promise of finding each other in a different existence where they can be there together…. It’s very much influenced by surrealist films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Big Fish, and The Matrix — where the protagonists break earthly, physical laws, cross through parallel universes or simulations to save or be with someone they love. Ultimately the song is about working through adversity to find love, and to fight to keep it alive.” That’s a worthy cause no matter the season.
Ninajirachi, ‘Fuck My Computer’
Sometimes life comes at you fast. A few days ago we were minding our own damn business, and within literal minutes of each other heard Ninajirachi’s “Fuck My Computer” on XMU Discovery and saw a promo for the Australian artist’s upcoming local show September 25 at Cambridge’s Middle East. It was our double-shot introduction to electronic DJ and producer Nina Wilson, and suddenly we feel like BFFs. Maybe it’s the unhinged blog house, tech, and hard electro that courses wildly through frenzied debut album I Love My Computer, which dropped this month on NLV Records; maybe it’s the unabashed ode to electronic culture that has us in a vise grip; or maybe it’s just that we haven’t been treated to hyperactive dance-pop beats n’ treats like this in a hot minute. We deserve a dance party for these sweltering end times, and Ninajirachi has provided a cool soundtrack. Plug in: “I’ve spent more time with my computer than any one person, it helped me realise who I am and raised me for better or worse,” says Ninajirachi. “I may never have discovered electronic music without it, because I’m from a small town in regional Australia, and it’s not really a place where that exists. It’s a big contrast actually. All of my music is computer music, it’s my instrument, and I don’t know who I would be without it.” Same, girl.