Lavallette, NJ

Release date: Jul 24, 2026

Genre: Pop / Indie Folk

Label: Pure Victory Creative

This one is for the Jersey Shore girlies. Alaina Margaret Droog is a New York City-based indie and folk-pop singer-songwriter originally from Grafton, North Dakota.

Her July 24 single “Lavallette” is named after the small Ocean County borough on New Jersey’s Barnegat Peninsula. The town sits between the Atlantic Ocean and Barnegat Bay, which gives the title an immediate sense of summer, water and temporary escape. It is a very specific location rather than a fictional coastal backdrop, and that specificity gives the song’s longing somewhere real to live.

The track begins with Droog’s voice and acoustic guitar, leaving the opening almost completely uncovered and making the writing sound close. Additional layers arrive gradually, though the guitar remains the emotional center of the arrangement. The production gives the song room to grow without pulling attention away from the words.

“Lavallette” looks at a long-distance relationship through the memory of a place. The town becomes a meeting point between what the narrator has and what she misses. Naming the exact town makes the longing more convincing. She is returning to one dot on the New Jersey coast that already carries a person’s memory.