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.
Scarlet Nicole, ‘Poison’
Scarlet Nicole isn’t afraid of casting a musical spell to defend her sense of self. The Florida-born, Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter draws us into her shadow world with the haunting “Poison,” a Halloween release throbbing with a dark electronic intensity and hypnotism that lingered well past midnight. A heavy-beat yearner that transforms betrayal into empowerment, “Poison” is a cautionary tale for the modern world; a hymn for the wounded, the wild, and the reborn; and a call-to-power that harnesses evil in order to protect us from it. “I seek out revenge in the form of songwriting,” Scarlet reveals. “This song came from a real place — a moment of deep betrayal that forced me to transmute pain into power. The video plays with the duality of hunter and prey, the serpent and the sheep, and ultimately, reclaiming your strength in the face of deceit.” Gaze upon the Evers-directed visual below, and dance among the snakes and wolves to summon the strength deep within your soul.
City Builders, ‘No Sleep’
In this yawning 2025, nothing feels fun. City Builders is sick of that shit. The alt-pop project from Toronto artist Grace Turner drops an electro beat on the kind of all-night revelry we used to have with “No Sleep,” a rowdy banger that throbs with euphoria as the walls of chaos close in around us. It’s a pulsating soundtrack for wild nights, reckless fun, and a sense of unhinged liberation we all seemed to have lost along the way to yesterday. “My best friend and I turn into absolute demons on a night out,” says Turner. “There’s nothing like giving into your intrusive ideas with a best friend, and I needed to write something that sounded as chaotic as our nights out.” Mission accomplished. “No Sleep” is a mascara-smeared compass for the party circuit, filled with the promise and intrigue of a pre-game dress-up sesh, the strobe-lit revelry of a 3 a.m. bass drop, and the slutty haze of a misguided hook-up just before dawn. Its DNA traces back to the untamed blog house era and a glitzy and glittery time when pop music wasn’t afraid of being a little bit disheveled, and there’s a sense of fun to it that’s sorely lacking right now. Dial 666 and hit the town. There’s an afterparty somewhere.
Grade 2, ‘Cut Throat’
Being dependable isn’t really punk as fuck, but Grade 2 never seem to care about any of that shit. All the British band does is bang out street punk ripper after street punk ripper, taking the classic sound of their shore’s genre strain and filtering it through a piss n’ vitriol lens for the modern day. The trio’s 2023 self-titled record should hold firm as one of the decade’s finest and furious long-players, and we’ve entered the realm where anything Grade 2 unleash is worth the time and effort. Now they’re back with a new string of sonic punches. The latest is “Cut Throat,” a blistering sprint about perseverance that arrives on Epitaph. The title of the track tells us what we’re in for, pretty much. “’Cut Throat’ is about a world that takes more than it gives,” the band elaborates. “It’s a commentary on striving for more in situations where most people are out for themselves. It’s personal perseverance in a time that feels so empty and cold.”
Glixen, ‘medicine bow’
When the Something In The Way Fest 2026 lineup dropped a few weeks ago, we were stoked to see Glixen in the mix alongside Sunny Day Real Estate, Explosions in the Sky, Momma, and others. When the festival returns to Roadrunner in Brighton this winter, the Phoenix shoegaze band should deliver a hefty dose of sonic warmth, and that feeling is fueled by weighty new single “medicine bow.” The follow-up to February EP Quiet Pleasures, which featured the shoegaze storm “All Tied Up”, furthers the foursome’s ability to harness a distorted avalanche of sound that’s both expansive and precise. “It’s a sense of urgency bound to the quiet yearning for self-comfort,” the band states. “The song drifts between lucidity and a fever dream, where soft vulnerability meets slow-burning decay. The lead and rhythm guitars melt and unmeld in a hypnotic blur, mirroring the emotional push and pull at the heart of the track. With each refrain, ‘medicine bow’ becomes a reflection of that internal ache to hold on while letting go — a sonic unraveling that feels intimate and disoriented.” Hey that works for us.
HIGHDRIVE, ‘Cherry’
When life overwhelms, sometimes we need a song that pushes back with the same kind of intensity. Enter HIGHDRIVE, a fresh English band outta Brighton that arrive armed with perhaps the most consuming and encompassing guitar tone we’ve heard in a hot minute, unravelling a fervid new tune called “Cherry” that is as comforting as it is pummeling. The root inspo for the track is the decaying world around us, and the fivesome channel the despair we feel from the apathy of those in charge into an emotive and driven sonic seducer that’s cinematic in scope and dramatic in atmosphere. It holds the kind of aural appeal that would otherwise ‘gaze with casual longevity if it only had a fleeting moment to spare, its post-punk spirit undermined by an expansive wall of sound that acts as a pillow to brace our mental fall.
Produced by Coach Party drummer Guy Page, “Cherry” heralds HIGHDRIVE’s singing to Venn Records (Bob Vylan, Witch Fever), and instantly positions the band as one to ride shotgun with as we waltz together into societal collapse. Such comfort only exists in this miserable 2025.
“‘Cherry’ is about sitting with anger, but also about the desire to push back against apathy in whatever way you can,” says vocalist Lucas Leith. “The song came from a time where it felt (and still feels) like the people with the power and resources to make real change were looking the other way. I found myself feeling this mix of envy and frustration, watching those who could help the most do so little for those who need it. There’s a kind of hopelessness in that, like you’re shouting into a void. But I think we have to shout.”
Shout along with one of the motherland’s best new bands below.