Valley

Valley came together in Toronto in 2014, the story goes, after the members were accidentally double-booked at the same recording studio. That happy collision turned into one of Canadian pop's most reliable purveyors of widescreen, heart-on-sleeve melody. Today the band is a trio: Rob Laska on lead vocals and guitar, Alex Dimauro on bass and keys, and Karah James on drums and vocals. Together they make what they have long called alternative pop, music that pairs the immediacy of a great pop single with the texture and ambition of a band that genuinely plays.

The early run laid the groundwork. EPs like Car Test and This Room Is White showed a group already chasing big choruses, and their 2019 debut album Maybe, released through Universal Music Canada, gave those instincts a full canvas. "There's Still a Light In the House" remains one of their defining moments from this era, an anthemic, small-town-nostalgia song built to be shouted back at them from a crowd. The work earned Valley a Juno nomination for Breakthrough Group of the Year, an early signal that they were tapping into something real.

Then came the songs that traveled. "Hiccup," from 2020, and "Like 1999," released in 2021, became the kind of tracks that found people exactly when they needed them. "Like 1999" in particular took on a second life as a wistful ode to simpler, more carefree times, its glittering production and singalong hook landing during a stretch when a lot of listeners were craving exactly that feeling. The band's gift has always been this: turning specific, slightly melancholy memories into something euphoric and communal. By 2022 they were nominated for Group of the Year, and albums Last Birthday on Capitol and Lost in Translation kept widening the sound.

Their most recent chapter is also their most personal. Water the Flowers, Pray for a Garden, released in 2024, is the band's first record as a trio following Michael Brandolino's departure to focus on production. To make it, Valley decamped to a remote studio in Tennessee with their longtime friend, COIN frontman Chase Lawrence, producing. The result trades some of the easy gloss of earlier releases for something quieter and more intimate, a set of songs navigating love and loss with real openness. The title track is a small marvel of hard-won hope, and the album as a whole earned a Juno nomination for Alternative Album of the Year, proof that the band keeps growing rather than coasting.

Now they are looking forward again, with new single "Vending Machine" on the way. It is a fitting place to meet Valley: a band a decade into its run that still writes like every chorus matters. If you are new to them, the through-line is easy to hear across "Like 1999," "Hiccup," "There's Still a Light In the House," and the Water the Flowers material. These are pop songs with a pulse, made by people who clearly love the craft of building one. They are very much worth your time.