MPC-HC is just as good as VLC and maybe a little less cluttered. It's Windows only of course, but if that isn't a limiting factor, then it's a very good alternative to VLC in my opinion.
It's still actively being developed, the author just created a new project page for it for some reason. You can find it at https://github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc
"MPC-HC is not under development since 2017. Please switch to something else."