BIO

VETALEJ (pronounced vee-tá-li) is a singer, songwriter, and producer based in New England. Born in Belarus and raised in Massachusetts, he started playing music young at his local church. In 2007, a Portland band called Sonsofday found his drumming videos on YouTube and invited him on tour. That stretch of the road sharpened his live playing and showed him America — open highways, late nights, and a musical culture that felt like it was calling his name.

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After the tours ended, he wanted his own band. In 2011 Polar Jet was born, a four-piece rock group with Vetalej out front instead of behind the kit: a young singer with a rebellious streak, trying to kick the door down and get a point across. Their first EP came out the following year, and the band moved to Boston to play gigs through the summer. Just as the name suggested, the flight was short. Before 2012 was over, Polar Jet went on hiatus.

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Out of a band and looking for purpose, he turned back to recording — the one process that still felt like home. In 2013 he released his first solo EP, the eight-song Barista Scientista. A few hundred vinyl copies went to friends and local shops. The record moved away from rock-and-roll swagger toward introspective, nostalgic writing about time, meaning, and lines that refuse to take themselves too seriously. It closes with the stripped acoustic track “Born Into A Dream,” ending on: “It’s ok if it just doesn’t feel right, it shouldn’t be the end I swear, cause I’m not even there anymore, I’m not even there.”

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It wasn’t the end. On a trip through Europe the next year, walking the streets of Rome, he realized his hard drive was full of the music that had raised him — ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s — but something else was pulling. The new frontier looked like electronic music: computers, otherworldly textures, and beats. He bought Ableton Live and a Push, thinking he’d just experiment. That experiment turned into years of late nights, plugin rabbit holes, and detours through Berlin and Los Angeles.

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In 2015 he left Boston for New York, spent a summer in Brooklyn producing beats and longboarding around town, then headed back to Europe to see what was happening in Berlin. Eventually he landed in Los Angeles, drawn to house and electronic artists like Daft Punk, Bonobo, and Skrillex. He started the side project KOOKLA for electronic music and DJ sets, posting mixes on YouTube and sharpening his production.

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In 2020 he moved back to Massachusetts. Home felt familiar, but not quite home. He asked himself whether the music stopped there, or whether the songs written in LA deserved a life of their own. He gathered that material and released West Coast Days — a nostalgic, youthful record of Mulholland drives, sunsets, and late nights with friends. A record made for the open road.

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2021 was the year of crypto, and out of that whirlwind came Satoshi, an electronic/alternative album nodding to Satoshi Nakamoto. It arrived in June with computer beats, materialistic lyrics, and a brash attitude that matched the moment. That year he also leaned hard into music videos, posting clips almost monthly — “Tesla,” “Doge,” “Constellation” — six videos in all, pushing style and concept. Even then, something still felt unfinished. Who was Vetalej, and what did he actually want to sound like next?

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2022 brought a move to Fort Lauderdale and Miami. The answer showed up in a Guitar Center, when he picked up a Gibson J-45 — the same kind of guitar he’d written on a decade earlier. The connection was immediate. What had been missing was a simple instrument he knew in his hands, and songs that could be played at midnight in the kitchen with a table for a drum kit. He went back to those roots and wrote Renaissance, a return to form: an alternative rock record about love, breakup, meaning, and loneliness, after years of electronic experiments and side paths.

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Life moved fast after that. His son David was born in 2024, and his daughter Gabriella the next year. Time for music got scarce. When a stretch opened up to set up a studio at a friend’s place, he went all in and made Because We Were Young — an honest, raw, emotive record with echoes of Oasis, Kings of Leon, and Jet. Proof the energy was still there. Not letting go. Not backing down.

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Then the live rooms did what records sometimes cannot. In 2025 he saw Kings of Leon in Boston and Oasis in Los Angeles — two of the bands that built his ear — and left with a blaze he could not shake. That heat became Keep The Dream Alive: the intense breakout of “Kick Me Out,” the nostalgic drive of “California,” the melancholy of “Los Angeles,” a song about a city he gave four years to, a city that took a piece of his heart and refused to give it back. A city you love that does not love you back. The record cuts to the punchy, light “Audio Cassette,” then finishes with “Drive” — a yearning to get away and find another place to be. Not finished. Still going. Keeping the dream alive.