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.
Valencia Grace, ‘Lucky You’re A Star’
Few may realize it right now, but Valencia Grace had a massive 2025. The transatlantic-raised alt-pop riser delivered a startling amount of modern maximalist bangers fit for any playlist, lining the year with a string of singles that may one day, quite soon, help shape a greatest hits record. Grace capped shit off in December with an overwhelming operatic tour-de-force called “Lucky You’re A Star,” which we first heard on BumbleBee Radio in early February (so it counts for this round-up). It’s a sonic make-out session for disco headbangers on Mars, and just might do for opera what Chappell Roan did for theatre not too long ago. Pair that with tracks like “Super Elastic,” a neutron bomb of a bop that recalls Fame-era Gaga, classic Madonna, and modern rhinestone-pop flavored with a Marina sweetener; queer-awakening electro yearner “The Holy Trinity”; and a storming cover of The Cranberries’ “Zombie”, and Grace has all the makings of the Next. Big. Thing. in modern pop music. She’s at the intimate, 100-seat Rockwell Theatre in Somerville on March 25, and a few months from now everyone will (falsely) claim to have been there.
Metric, ‘Victim of Luck’
While we’re all out here playing the 2016 challenge, going back a decade before everything truly went to shit, Metric are taking the nostalgia leap a bit further. The veteran indie band announced a new album called Romanticize The Dive, out April 24 on Thirty Tigers, and with it comes a shimmering jolt of hopeful aughts-pop with lead single “Victim of Luck,” transporting us back to the band’s early days of the 2000s, when dead discos, combative babies, and quests for old world undergrounds ruled our iPods. It was also a time of creative awakenings, humble beginnings, and the start of a wild journey, for the band and everyone else of a certain age. “The song ‘Victim Of Luck’ and really the entire album is about the romance of a less than perfect life,” says Emily Haines. “It’s about dropping the mask of self-consciousness and vanity. It was a long journey for me to get out of my own way and I wanted this song to be a rallying cry for that, better late than never. You can be as much a victim of good luck as bad.” With the new album comes a new tour, and included is a July 27 romp at MGM Music Hall in Boston — not too far from those first early Metric shows more than 20 years ago at the Paradise Rock Club (IYKYK, DFA1979 absolutely slayed on that one night back in fall ’04).
MX LONELY, ‘Anesthetic’
MX LONLEY — stylized in all caps, one gap — may hail from Brooklyn, but there is something about new single “Anesthetic” that transports us back to an Allston basement show in the early 2010s. The push and pull of the quartet’s heavygaze feels both deliberate and delicate, providing dizzying results, and this and January’s scrappy “Return to Sender” nicely set up the band’s intriguing debut album ALL MONSTERS (all caps, one gap), out this month on Julia’s War Recordings. The riff-mad sound of “Anesthetic” is fueled by the theme of an internal struggle between sensation and paralysis, with vocalist Rae Hass offering: “Anesthetic (noun) is defined as any substance that induces insensitivity to pain. …’Anesthetic’ is a love song to the addict. An ode to and feeling highs and lows rather than searching for something to numb the pain.” The official music video, directed by Owen Lehman, calls for attention.
Kit Major, ‘Not As Witty As I Used To Be’
To quote the great American punk rock poet Jello Biafra, “Rick Wakeman, eat your heart out.” Los Angeles rock and roll firecracker Kit Major is here with a quick jolt of lightning to the sonic senses with “Not As Witty As I Used To Be,” a bratty and confrontational new ripper that sets up her forthcoming EP Miss Ego, dropping June 12 on Futureless Records. A high-energy garage punk romp that’s more a warning than a confession, it clocks in at an economical 107 seconds in length, but Major doesn’t need a lot of time to get the point across. “’Not As Witty As I Used To Be’ is a mouthful, but a song this short needs length somewhere,” she reasons. “It’s playful and a little unhinged. I’d rather spill my secrets shouting over guitars than in silence.” Yeah girl, we got time for that. Crank it up, and make no apologies.
Genesis Owusu, ‘STAMPEDE’
This is the point in New England winter — the miserable and frozen late-February zone where vivid color gives way to icy grayscale — where we’re usually looking ahead to the Memorial Day weekend, the summer gateway spent out in the open fields of Boston Calling. There is no such anticipatory joy this year, so we’re looking back at some recent highlights, like Genesis Owusu blowing the imaginary doors off the Blue Stage back in 2023. We’re reminded of that electro-art shake n’ bake this week with the Ghanaian-Australian artist’s rousing new ripper “STAMPEDE”, a propulsive fit of melodic urgency that transports us, sonically and visually, to sunnier skies. In the video, directed by Isaac Brown, Owusu takes us to the streets and surrounds of Accra in Ghana, continuing his rise as a global artist delivering us to his borderless world, one frantic beat at a time. “This whole project is about humanity and community, not just in Australia where I live, but globally,” he says. “It felt nourishing to go back to my home country for the first time in 11 years and showcase a bit of the culture there; the youth and the deep subcultures, far beyond the perceptions a lot of people may have of Africa.” Ride along below.