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.
Glazyhaze, ‘Do You?’
Back when we were teenagers, all we wanted to do was lay out in a field and make out with someone. Now that we’re collectively trapped in a middle-age malaise, we’re jonesing for that same kind of carefree connection. If we ever find it, Glazyhaze will provide the soundtrack, as the Venice band summons the sensation of a summer make-out session with ebullient new single “Do You?,” out now on Hoodooh and Believe Music. It’s an upbeat shoegaze, alt-rock, and dream-pop pinwheel with an undertow allure, as its heaviness cascades into a gentle crash all over our lovelorn faces, with enough sonic seduction to make us feel young and alive once more. And when lyrics like “Kiss me until the sun is out / Kiss me until I smell like you / Kiss me until the sun is out, is out / Feels like you don’t really mind, do you?” fill our oversized headphones, it may in fact be Glazyhaze that hold us the closest.
IAN SWEET, ‘Criminal Kissing’
Right now there is someone reading this article while wondering if they should reach back out to their ex. We’re not here to tell you whether that’s a good idea or not (pros and cons are for the gullible, after all), but we will supply IAN SWEET’s absolutely captivating new single as a soundtrack for any (sound/poor) decision-making. The former Boston artist and human being born Jillian Medford delivered the shimmering “Criminal Kissing” late last month (and late enough to include it here, don’t @ us), the first taste of new album Shiverstruck, out July 24 on Polyvinyl, and we suspect it’ll show up in December when we’re busy collecting the year’s best bops. It just has a certain vibe to it that’s serving classic, and possesses the type of romantic haziness required for allowing the bad ones back into your life. Between now and SOTY season, we’ll lean on it whenever we feel a little too nostalgic for the one that got away (for good reason). “’Criminal Kissing’ is a love letter to making bad decisions,” Medford says. “Like hooking up with your ex even though you’ll be left emotionally unraveling and picking up the pieces afterwards. Sometimes you just have to lean into the chaos spiral and see where it leads you.” Let this one lead you to Royale, as IAN SWEET plays the Tremont Street joint with American Football on July 8.
Shark School, ‘Don’t Trust A Man’
Irish noise-making trio Shark School release debut album Selachimorpha next month, and we had to look up what that word meant (the internet says it’s “the scientific superorder for modern sharks, representing a clade of cartilaginous fish within the subclass Elasmobranchii”). The record was announced with a crunchy new guitar-rock crusher called “Don’t Trust A Man,” and well, we need not ask Jeeves what this is all about, as it becomes obvious at first menace. Falling somewhere between Nirvana and Wet Leg, it’s confrontational and jagged, with a controlled chaos that feels about to burst at any point in its 203-second runtime. And it acts as much as a threat than a warning from the Galway trio of Nora Staunton (guitar/vocals), Peggy Ford (bass) and Meg Bruce (drums). “‘Don’t Trust A Man’ is an abrasive and raw track lamenting the desperation for women to comfortably just be; to just exist free of the burden and disappointment of living within a gendered social hierarchy,” the band offer up. Fins up, fucks down.
Ellise, ‘Liplock’
“You know you’ll get me in your liplock / And I know that I should hate you but you’re too hot.” That’s the seductive hot-pink dagger planted straight into our blackened heart by Ellise, the Iraqi-American dark-pop siren who courts darkness with desire and continues to pull us into her cinematic world. The “Liplock” video is the final video chapter in her attention-grabbing visual series for April EP Bedroom Confessional, and it echoes a late-night spiral of passion, impulse, and autonomy. Perhaps the moon is to blame. “The ‘Liplock’ music video… begins with me burning the remnants of the demons of my past and freeing myself,” Ellise says. “I wanted this video to feel fun, energetic, and like the perfect chaotic ending to this story. It represents how my mind felt when leaving everything I thought I knew behind and starting from scratch again: Scary, but exciting and fresh.” Themes of obsession, heartbreak, and self-reckoning run rampant through the EP, which feel well-aligned to life in this chaotic 2026, so allow Ellise to lure you in to her nocturnal vision below. Who you kiss to it is up to you.
Paycheque, ‘Temporary Love’
Enough time has passed where we are ready for some early-2010s nostalgia, and that sentiment swirls through our faded n’ jaded headspace as we take Paycheque’s hypnotic new single “Temporary Love” out for an eager spin. The alluring new city-pop seducer from the Los Angeles duo of Alison Goldfarb and Jackson MacIntosh (TOPS, Drugdealer) has obvious call-backs to nocturnal ’80s synth-pop, in both sound and structure, but we also hear some glossy sonic DNA that transports us to a better time some 15 years ago when bands like Chromatics, Blouse, and Lower Dens were flirting within our glamour-smeared playlists. A debut record from Paycheque arrives June 12 via Mansions And Millions, and we’re wildly excited to let this new modern-retro sound wash over us in an extended sitting. In the meantime, “Temporary Love” keeps us occupied under the glow of neon blacklight. The song is said to ponder impermanence as it shape-shifts across a hazy aural daydream, and it’s very easy to get lost in the wonderful sounds at play. It’s an instant entry into our V List series, and playfully flashes its bedroom eyes towards our year-end roundup arriving in December. Quite lovely, quite necessary.