Single for Valentine's Day?

These singles have all the heart you needed

FOGGY OTIS - “You’re Just What I Need” (Verdict Music)
The ukulele has come a long way since Tiny Tim relegated it to the world of oddball novelty songs, and Foggy Otis - late of New Jersey, the Hudson Valley, and currently suburban Connecticut - is helping lead the charge. The first single from the forthcoming deluxe re-release of When Life Hands You Lemons, Play the Ukulele on Verdict Music, “You’re Just What I Need” starts with the warm, rounded tones of Foggy’s uke - a far cry from the plinkity-plinks of yore - as well as subtle undertones of bass and percussion that accompany that craggy, homespun voice.

The lyrics gently tease the idea of a “broken heart” as one that literally doesn’t work, a tad ironic given Foggy Otis’ real-life history of lifesaving bypass surgery. Jersey Beat’s Rich Quinlan described Foggy’s music as “a smile set to music,” but this song feels more like a hug, a feel-good panacea that bridges the Great American Songbook and Laurel Canyon folk/pop, with a gentle sense of humor that avoids treacly sentimentality. The song’s title arrives almost as a punchline at the finale.

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THE DRACU-LAS - “I’m Blue (The Gong-Gong Song)” (Outro Records)
Jersey City’s Dracu-las keep their crush on Sixties pop burning bright with a Valentine’s cover of the Ikettes’ 1961 nugget “I’m Blue (The Gong-Gong Song).” It’s a perfect fit for this crew—sweet, soulful, and dripping with reverb. Kyna Damewood and Courtney Eddington trade flirty coos and harmonies straight out of a girl-group daydream, while the band wraps everything in Farfisa shimmer and surfy twang. Mitch Cady’s backbeat keeps things pulsing, Babak Khodabandeh drops in a tasty guitar break, and before you know it, the whole thing’s over but still stuck in your head. The lyrics might be fluff, sure—but that groove? Solid gold, baby.

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THE VIBRANT COLORS - “Embrace” (Self-released)
Billy Gray’s been around the block enough times to know what he’s doing, so whether “Embrace” is a tongue‑in‑cheek love letter to the glory days of arena rock or a full‑throated embrace of it, I’ll let you decide. Either way, the man commits. By the time the first “la‑da‑da‑dah” hits, you can picture a crowd of Gen‑Z’ers holding their phones aloft like it’s Giants Stadium in ’82. Close your eyes and it’s Journey; open them and you’re still in Bar Freda—and somehow it works. From the heroic vocals to the stacked harmonies to that delirious a cappella crescendo, this thing shoots for the rafters and lands square in the stratosphere. You don’t need smoke machines or pyrotechnics when you’ve got heart, humor, and a few cheap amps. Vibrant Colors makes believing in rock ‘n’ roll feel possible again.

(Vibrant Colors will perform at Ridgewood’s Bar Freda for their record release party on Friday, March 6.)

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THE POLAROIDS – “Here Comes A Regular” (Self-released)
When I first caught Hoboken’s 3 Dollars doing a ferocious take on the Replacements’ “Bastards of Young” at Church Square Park a few summers back—that’s when I realized those noisy hardcore kids had as much heart as distortion. Now comes the Polaroids, another rising Jersey City outfit with a foot on the fuzz pedal and a finger on the pulse, stepping up with “Here Comes A Regular.” This one’s mostly front man Edgar Echevarria alone with an acoustic guitar, and what he finds in Paul Westerberg’s masterpiece isn’t booze or bravado—it’s the ache underneath, the kind of loneliness you don’t need a bar to understand. It’s rough around the edges, sure, more demo than production, but that rawness feels right. You can hear the soul behind the volume, and that’s what makes this recording hit home.

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BIST - “Qandy Cane” / “Drive Thru (And Find Out)” (Self-released)
When I first heard Bist back in 2023, the Hudson/Bergen County trio were barely out of homeroom—too young to play bars, too clueless to even get their songs online. Their debut single, “Qandy Cane” backed with “Drive Thru (And Find Out),” has since been buffed up and re-released, and now the rest of us finally get to hear what the cool kids at Arts High were already screaming about.

Greg Reyes fronts the band, all six-foot-five of him, the kind of guy you’d expect to see under the basket, not behind a mic. But what sets Bist apart is the way Reyes throws himself into these songs with no safety net, stretching from a soulful falsetto to a full-throated bark that hits like a basement PA about to give out. Drummer Joaquin Narucki—recently old enough to buy his own cymbals, if not a beer —keeps everything taut and skittering, while Jade Recio’s bass snaps the whole thing into focus.

“Qandy Cane” kicks off like a sugar rush chased with static—two minutes of jittery energy that nods to those early-2000’s Jersey DIY years before we all learned how to tune guitars and filter our feelings. There’s punk sweat in the DNA, but the hooks are too smart—and too sweet—to call it “emo.” This is Indie Rock straight out of the Nineties, by a band whose members were born in the 21st Century.

Over on the flip, “Drive Thru (And Find Out)” feels like a late-night argument in a McDonald’s parking lot that turns into a singalong. The guitars buzz and splatter with that perfect garage tone—half power-pop fizz, half burned amp wire—and Reyes sells every line like he’s laughing at the wreckage of his own love life. The lyrics? Equal parts side-eye and self-awareness: romantic crash-and-burns, social weirdness, and the day-to-day junk we all lug around between TikToks. It’s not nihilism—it’s “yeah, this is a mess, pass the fries.”

In a world full of algorithmically chilled indie-rock playlists, Bist sticks out like a sore thumb—and thank god for that. These songs don’t want to be background noise. They want to matter, the way discovering music used to matter. Plug in your headphones, hit play, and remember why you fell in love with noisy, heartfelt rock bands in the first place.