The duo Rachael & Vilray—Lake Street Dive singer/songwriter Rachael Price and the guitarist/singer/songwriter Vilray—return with “Just Me This Year,” written by Vilray, about the pleasures of spending the winter holidays alone after a welcome romantic breakup. “For those who happen to be going it alone this time of year, we’re here to help you embrace the freedom!” said Vilray.

DownBeat said of Rachael & Vilray’s 2019 self-titled debut that the two “proffer a way of connecting not-quite-the-past with not-quite-the-present, resulting in a timeless quality,” and NPR said, “She can sing anything; he can play anything … Tin Pan Alley meets the Lower East Side in a smoky bar, in songs with a twist of humor.” 

Price and Vilray began performing together in 2015, although they first met in 2003 as students at the New England Conservatory of Music. Vilray formed a couple of bands with Price’s soon-to-be bandmates in Lake Street Dive. Price recalls he had a nimble mind and quick wit when it came to lyrics. But, she says, “I didn’t know that Vilray and I shared a love of this particular time period of jazz.”

It was more than a decade later that Price and Vilray began to collaborate. She had been on the road much of each year with Lake Street Dive and he had been developing his own solo act, just voice and guitar.

Price remembers her first time sitting in with Vilray vividly: “He gave me one of his songs to learn. No one knew it wasn’t a standard. That got the ball rolling for him on the writing. He started sending me songs constantly. We quickly went from peppering in his songs with obscure ones from the thirties and forties to all Vilray songs.”