AM\/FM Festival<\/a>, the frontwoman always hops off the stage, becoming a part of the crowd and spurring them to \u201cget hype.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\nGarcia also inspires Tovar with her dedication and organization. He recalled the singer had a Google Drive with demos and chords for each track to keep the band in the know while practicing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As an up-and-coming musician in the Gainesville scene himself, Tovar is grateful to have Garcia and her band as a support system and knows if there’s ever an empty space to fill at one of her gigs, she\u2019ll give him a call.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s really nice, because these new waves of bands that are coming up, I’m friends with all of them, and it really feels like a little family,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On \u201cUltraviolet,\u201d Garcia also teamed up with audio engineers back home in Miami to help refine her track \u2014 and to teach her more about the world of producing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When it comes to songwriting, Garcia takes on the task herself again in \u201cUltraviolet.\u201d Most of her past work has explored themes of introspection and identity, but the new song is her first interpretation of romantic relationships. Garcia\u2019s struggle with self-esteem is still evident in the track, in lyrics like \u201cI don’t need to be convinced I might only want you because I don’t want myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Between writing material and pursuing her double major, Garcia finds much of her time as an independent artist is allocated to social media. She finds it unfortunate that building a brand often takes precedence over music making in today\u2019s industry, but she\u2019s been hard at work to promote herself and her singles.\u00a0<\/p>\n
From the moment she wakes up until she goes to bed, Garcia\u2019s working, and she said it\u2019s been \u201cgrind city\u201d lately. Now with four released tracks, and many more written over the past few weeks, she hopes to have an EP out at the start of next year.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Though it may have been tough to seek out help with \u201cUltraviolet,\u201d breaking into the Gainesville music scene wouldn\u2019t have been possible without Garcia taking initiative to connect with her fellow musicians.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Early on in Van\u00e9 Light\u2019s career, Garcia sought advice and collaboration from local bands. Noise Next Door\u2019s drummer, Max Goldberg, recommended her to people organizing gigs around town. He also suggested attending The Bull\u2019s open mic night, where his band got their start.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Goldberg, a 21-year-old UF accounting junior, doesn\u2019t think there\u2019s another band in Gainesville that looks or sounds quite like Van\u00e9 Light, a female-fronted synth pop group, he said. With a lineup of talented musicians, he added, the gigs are now booking themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe advice I gave her is the advice I’ll give anyone, which is just become a friend of the scene,\u201d he said. \u201cKnow the bands, know the people, reach out. She did it exactly right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Contact Isabel Kraby at ikraby@alligator.org. Follow her on X @isabelgkraby.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n\n
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Isabel Kraby<\/strong><\/p>\n\n
Isabel is the The Alligator’s Spring 2026 music reporter. She is a junior studying journalism at UF and is from Ormond Beach, FL. In her spare time, she loves going to concerts, crafting and practicing guitar.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.alligator.org \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Making it on your own as a musician once seemed to be the only plausible path to singer-songwriter Vanessa Garcia.\u00a0 Garcia, a 20-year-old UF media production, management and technology and economics sophomore \u2014 whose artist name is Van\u00e9 Light \u2014 took to YouTube University her freshman year of high school and started learning to produce […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2307579,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2307578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Vane-Light-learns-to-ask-for-help-on-new-single.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2307578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2307578"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2307578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2307580,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2307578\/revisions\/2307580"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2307579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2307578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2307578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2307578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}