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.
Gurriers, ‘Party Lines’
The second half of this flaccid 2026 is now in session, and Gurriers are here to put a spike in our step. A few weeks back the Dublin shit-stirrers unleashed incendiary single “Nobody’s Coming To Save You”, which beyond the booming sounds from the rising alt-rock band provides maybe the most quintessential song-title-as-warning for our current environment. In July they served notice with the frenzied “Party Lines,” a relentless dose of high-energy dance-punk hedonism and assault on the strobe-lit senses that was inspired by the war in Sudan, exploring “the theme of politicians spending money on aid and provisions for countries on the one hand, whilst trading weapons and waging war on these same countries with the other.” Swirling in its sonic DNA is a piercing brawl of ’90s Prodigy, ’00s Kasabian, and ’10s Murder Capital. And someone in the next decade may note that something that sounds quite like this will be coded in ’20s Gurriers. Get down with this beast of a single, and steady the fist for forthcoming album Nobody’s Coming To Save You, out September 25 on Play It Again Sam.
Diary, ‘Keep Comin’ Up’
There’s a sound that plays in our head on a constant loop, an incessant groove of hazy glamour dolled up in jangly guitars, cross-faded rhythms, and baggy dance beats that began with us browsing the import bins of Tower Records in the ’90s and spending summer coin on bloated CD singles and glossy lad mags. We’ve been chasing that sonic high ever since, and Diary capture that vibe and propel it into the modern day with “Keep Comin’ Up.” It’s the latest from the New York fivesome’s forthcoming Kanine Records debut album, September’s Spiral Bound, and acts as a portal back into a world when music could actually transform our mood and reshape our confidence. Lifting spirits higher than the clouds that look down upon us, “Keep Comin’ Up” fuels a transatlantic desire with a proper shot of Madchester swagger, propulsive dream-pop, and retro-nostalgic ’60s psychedelia where a wall-of-sound gives way ever so slightly to reveal a glossy pop core. Produced by Bodega’s Ben Hozie, this headstrong cruiser comes correct with an appropriate visual, calling back to ’60s New York and the Silver Factory parties of Andy Warhol. Bring back Select and demand us Yanks stay home.
Slow Joy, ‘Forget’
The long hard cock of 2026 has extended itself well past Fourth of July, and we’re left here orifice agape without so much as a proper Song of the Summer. Excitedly, Slow Joy are here to rectify the situation, allowing us a fluttering daydream of escapism through a blissful torrent of alt-rock, post-hardcore, and whatever-gaze called “Forget.” The project of New Mexico’s Esteban Flores dropped this emotive banger in mid-July, and it’s featured on the forthcoming and wonderfully titled new album Esteban Flores, out August 14 on MDDN Records. With a noisy purr and ache that’s rapturous in its distorted allure, the song embraces the unknown with a calm and cool comfort, allowing for repeated listens as the stress of the days slowly melts away. What comes next? For a few minutes, it’s not top of mind. “’Forget’ is a song about giving in,” Flores says. “I always felt like I had an idea of what life was like and how things were supposed to work. As I get older I realize nothing in life is certain. That’s a beautiful thing.” Slow Joy bring this SOTS contender to Sonia in Cambridge on August 7, one of 21 stops on the I Love You So Much I Could Die tour of North America. Don’t you “Forget.”
Bleached Cross, ‘Blood Moon’
The air we breathe is burnt in a suffocating haze, our food is defiled to render us incapacitated, and the water supply is evaporating to fuel an artificial creativity only the soulless seem to desire. So it’s easy to see we have the sweet release of death on our minds, solely as a means of escapism from the modern confines that are slowly eroding a once steadfast will to live. Bleached Cross are giving us a compass to explore humanity on the other side, or at least, take the dwindling good with us, through a spectral echo bath of lost love called “Blood Moon.” It’s the final aural preview of the Chicago darkwave band’s album Wrath, out now on New Morality Zine. And it blooms like a sonic portal to the other side. “This song is about eternal love, devotion, and the idea of fate bonding people together even beyond death, as love is the one thing death is unable to take away from the living,” the band reveals. “The ending implies the taking of someone else’s life to ease their suffering, knowing fate will bind you together again in the next life, but it can also be interpreted as killing yourself to be with someone who has passed… both ideas come up in other songs on the album.” If there is a better path on the other side, then we’ll finally have hope once again.
Ultra Lights, ‘Bad Feeling’
Perhaps there are no better opening lyrics to a song released this year than “Well it’s a pretty nice day for a kick in the face / And if you like it so much you should take my place.” That comes from Ultra Lights and the buzzy Atlanta band’s dirty lil’ rock n’ droll bop “Bad Feeling,” which makes us wonder if perhaps there is no better song title released this year, as well. Luckily, “Bad Feeling” takes the stress of the day away with a quickness that belies the detached cool embedded in its sonics, and it’s featured on the foursome’s debut album, this month’s Pleasure’s All Yours. Comparisons to The Strokes and Pavement are required by law to fill this space, but that’s just selling John Robinson and the gang mad short, as this is a startling record with the type of musical and lyrical goodies that should endure on our collective playlists well until it’s time to compile our year-in-review handies. The increasingly beige garage rock shade of indie rock sure could use a kick in the face right now, and Ultra Lights seem to have enough swagger to effortlessly lift the foot above the waist without missing a nihilistic beat. Come for the smoke-drag allure of “Bad Feeling,” stay for the type of album we’ve been waiting for a hot minute now.