Kiana V Talks Love, Music, and Her Big Year Ahead in 2025

Kiana V is about to embark on a big year in 2025, with an upcoming album and a wedding planned. As the year comes to a close, she speaks to Vogue Philippines about love in the now.

Kiana Valenciano, known professionally as the musician Kiana V, knows how to linger. Smooth, buttery vocals, catchy hooks, and production that blends R&B and electronic influences make for surefire earworm material. Since her debut in 2017, her music has offered deeply personal reflections on love, loss, and longing that are effortlessly resonant.

“When I write, it’s just me trying to process things,” she says. “I think that’s why it resonates with people who feel deeply.” It has always been important for her to approach music by prioritizing honesty over perfection. “I don’t think about making the perfect song,” she shares. “I think about making something honest.”

Of course, Kiana V grew up immersed in music. Her father, OPM pioneer Gary Valenciano, exposed her to the art from an early age. Yet, she resists the weight of expectations tied to her family legacy, focusing instead on carving her own path. “My dad always told me to stay true to my voice,” she explains. “That advice shaped how I approach everything.”

Recently, Kiana V released the track “Sana,” created during a songwriting camp in LA run by Mono Stereo Groove. The track is a heartfelt nod to her family, incorporating a sample from her father’s classic ballad “Sana Maulit Muli,” which her mother wrote the lyrics of.

She co-wrote the reinterpreted track “Sana” with Rose Tan, and although there was no pressure to reinterpret the song, the process felt incredibly natural and organic. “It was a great experience for me because it was a room in the middle of Hollywood full of Filipino creatives, Filipino songwriters, producers, engineers. I just left the room incredibly proud and missing home and missing family,” the musician recalls. “More than anything, I felt like I wanted to embrace who I was, and I was in an amazing room of these Filipino collaborators, and we ended up with ‘Sana.'”

“Sana” is a heartfelt nod to Kiana’s family, incorporating a sample from her father Gary Valenciano’s classic ballad “Sana Maulit Muli,” which her mother Angeli Pangilinan-Valenciano wrote the lyrics of. Courtesy of Kiana Valenciano

At the moment, Kiana V is gearing up to release a full-length album, which she says is inspired by experiences she had before she met her current partner. “It’s really quite retrospective: I’m singing about my past, how it slowly led me to who I am now, or how I love now,” she shares. “It’s so funny because I’m in love now, then I have to sing about songs about letting go, and the past … and I’m like, bye. Actually, I don’t really feel that anymore, I’m just singing about this because it’s funny that I went through it. If you’re going through it now, godspeed.” The album will be her first full-length album since 2019’s See Me, and is slated to be released sometime next year.

The young musician reflects on the trust and vulnerability required when creating music. “It’s surprising how something so specific can resonate, not because someone’s experienced the exact same thing, but because they’ve gone through something similar,” she says. “That’s what draws us to artists who are open about their most intimate moments. We’ve all faced pain, insecurities, and self-doubt, and while we each deal with them in our own ways, there’s something about hearing that authenticity, whether in their writing or performance, that clicks internally.”

Something does click with the music that flows through the speakers. She circles around love often: the subtle complexities of relationships, quiet moments of affection, uncertainty, and self-reflection. Surrounded by love, the musician is endlessly inspired, saying that the themes she explores in her music are the conversations she indulges in with her own friends, family, and fiancè.

“My music often explores love and identity from a millennial woman’s perspective, reflecting on who I am, what I offer. Love is such a big part of being human,” she muses. “It’s not just romance: it’s the love you give yourself, the love you hold back, the love that evolves.”