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.
Weakened Friends, ‘Tough Luck (Bleed Me Out)’
Chances are, anyone reading this is burnt the eff out. Grind culture is a scam, and now we’re all caught in a daily cycle that’s left us lifeless, listless, and feeling less than before. Weakened Friends are feeling this shit too, and now the Maine trio deliver an alt-rock banger to help us break free in “Tough Luck (Bleed Me Out),” a dizzying and cathartic anthem for all our real-world woes. “After years of bouncing between underpaid, dead-end part-time jobs and being treated like a cog in a machine, we channeled that frustration into a rallying cry against toxic capitalism,” the band says. “It’s both a personal exorcism and a collective anthem for anyone who’s ever felt burned out, used up, and still told to be grateful for the privilege. It’s a reminder that there’s power in stepping back, speaking out, and saying no to a system that was never built to care about us in the first place.” Check out the Jim Gilbert-directed video below, which features visual backdrop effects by Aaron Eskeets and a host of other notable contributions, and stay tuned for Weakened Friends’ forthcoming album Feels Like Hell, out October 10 on Don Giovanni.
King Princess, ‘Cry Cry Cry’
This miserable 2025 feels like the year where literally nothing is working out, and not even friendships are safe anymore. King Princess has experienced this bullshit first-hand, the Brooklyn vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer and actor born Mikaela Straus has channeled the experience into a searing new tune called “Cry Cry Cry.” The euphoric alt-pop jam with a guitar-rock engine hit the streams mid-month, and it’ll be featured on her forthcoming Girl Violence album, out in September ahead of a fall tour that delivers her to Boston on November 2. “‘Cry Cry Cry’ is about a friendship with a lady that did not work out,” says Straus. “Sometimes two divas create an explosion.” And sometimes the fallout creates a pitch-perfect pop bop that’ll make us give the suspicious side-eye to the person rolling with us to the beach later today. This year, everyone is suspect.
Isabella&Sebastian, ‘Lobbytommy’
It’s been a minute since we had an ampersand band sass up our playlists, and even longer since we had our very first lobotomy at Claire’s (oh, how we miss shopping malls). Both things return to the here and now with an indie-pop fervor through “Lobbytommy,” the playfully buoyant new single from Isabella&Sebastian that’s the final appetizer for the whimsical Memphis duo’s debut album, Is Anybody Listening?. “‘Lobbytommy’ is about combating self-sabotage,” says 20-year-old Isabella DeFir, joined in the group by 13-year-old Sebastian Stephens. “It’s so easy to get in your head and convince yourself you’re not deserving of the things you want, but it’s good to approach and question why you feel that way and to remind yourself how hard you worked to get where you are.” Together, they add: “Regarding the title, Isabella made a joke about getting a lobotomy at Claire’s. Sebastian told her that when he was a kid, he thought it was pronounced ‘lobby Tommy,’ and we thought it was so funny that we made it the title of the song.”
MFK, ‘DUST’
They don’t teach this shit in schools, but the fastest way to get out of a dead-end town is by riding a bassline to a better place — even if it’s merely a mental escapade. And that bass is the fire that fuels MFK’s shadowy new single “DUST,” a seductive slice of funked-up post-punk that should soon have the masses dances proudly across county lines. The quartet hailing from the northwest of England unleash a stylish fit of noir-colored doom-pop, and it suggests MFK are a new band worth leaning into, from not only a musical perspective but also a cultural one. “DUST is an ode to left behind towns,” the band tells Vanyaland. “The places where, through no fault of their own, progress is frozen and even the most reasonable of dreams die on a bonfire of bin bags and old TVs. Where the only two sensible options are to either get out of your mind or do something creative to kick back. We’re from just such a left-behind-town so it’s a song that’s close to our hearts and tendency to get both out of our minds and to start a band.” Follow MFK to the depths of wherever you need to be below.
Suede, ‘Dancing With The Europeans’
A few short years ago the mighty Suede delivered the unexpected with Autofiction, an album so potent in its vitality and beautifully self-aware in its context it remarkably earned a place alongside the English icons’ ’90s-era holy trinity. It found a weathered and battle-worn band once again comfortable in its own skin, exploring themes of aging, of personal growth and maturity, and how we are all so much older than we were when we first kissed in rooms to popular tunes. It was perhaps the most in the moment Suede record since the forever unfuckwithable debut.
Nearly three years later, Brett Anderson and the gang are prepping their 10th (!) studio album in Antidepressants, out September 5 via BMG, and sterling new single “Dancing With The Europeans” suggests there’s still some magic floating through the air that binds us all these decades later. It carries the same type of contagiousness we first heard in 2013 comeback record Bloodsports, and all the hits that came before it.
A thematic electrical current that flows through Antidepressants is a feeling of connection in an increasingly distant world, and “Dancing With The Europeans” encapsulates that notion in the same way classic tracks like “Trash” and “Can’t Get Enough” once did. The bond between Suede’s die-hard fans and the band itself has always had a starring role in this never-ending drama, and now the two merge blissfully through the metallic sheen and effortless cool that permeates this new ripper.
“There’s a sense of optimism about this song,” says Anderson. “I remember specifically we were doing a gig in Spain during the time we were writing this album. I was going through a bad time and at a low, personally. But we played this brilliant gig. There was a great connection between me and the audience. I thought of the phrase, dancing with the Europeans. There’s something about that word, Europeans, that I really like. The phrase summed up the experience of looking for connection in a disconnected world. This sense of, where do we find those bonds with our fellow human beings That show in Spain broke down those barriers.”
Come dancing with one of England’s most essential bands, on this day or any one prior, as this evolving second act is holding steady as far more impressive than any of their Cool Britannia peers.