Every week, we update our Best New Songs playlist with several tracks that catch our attention, then round up the best songs of each month in this segment. Here, in alphabetical order, are the best songs of February 2026.
American Football, ‘Bad Moons’
A therapist might have kept it silent, but every confession Mike Kinsella spills out after the opening “Surprise!” runs back to childhood: innocence lost, abandonment, self-harm. “I’ve got some bad news, I only feel alive when I’m alone,” he sings on American Football’s first single in 8 years, which languishes in the aloneness of the dark, the great enabler of his worst behaviour. It hardly counts as news, of course, and nothing about ‘Bad Moons’ is particularly surprising, even as it unfurls some of the troubling details informing the backstory of LP4, including alcoholism and divorce. The striking thing about the 8-minute epic is how “a Frankenstein of two different demos,” as Kinsella describes it, appears stitchless, threading together the childlike and the brooding, the young boy and desperate man, as if there’s truly no separation in the dark. Its gentle shimmer pushes towards momentous catharsis like it’s bound to, but not without the band gracefully mustering more empathy than you’d expect.
Bill Callahan, ‘Empathy’
Not unlike Mike Kinsella singing “Surprise!,” ‘Empathy’ begins with Bill Callahan intoning the word “Dad” morosely, almost like he’s saying “dead.” It immediately darkens the atmosphere conjured by his lone, sweet fingerpicking, especially knowing he wouldn’t have written hadn’t his father passed away. The song wasn’t a single from his latest album My Days of 58, but its directness renders it a highlight. “You dropped a bomb on me,” Callahan continues, less like he’s recalling the moment than reimagining it so that he can measure his response, which doesn’t require much more than repeating the words back to him: “You said you got by without a father, so you figured why should I have one.” As he worries about what parts of his father’s selfishness might have passed down to him, the horns direct his attention back to his two children, carriers – no, makers – of seemingly endless beauty and empathy in his eyes. He returns to acknowledge his dad’s broken heart, recognizing no amount of ache in his own could muddy his pride.
Grace Ives, ‘Stupid Bitches’
The lead single from Grace Ives’ upcoming album Girlfriend is the best pop song released this year so far. For a song that includes the line “I’m a loser with an aching touch,” it really pulls no punches – there’s the title, of course, and when Ives sings “I think you’re a hater,” co-producer Ariel Rechtshaid’s percussion throws a few jabs in solidarity. But ‘Stupid Bitches’ is not a song seeking to create the illusion of imperviousness, just one extremely buzzed with the excitement of having made it through the other side of heartache. “God, I really played the fool,” Ives admits at the outset, “Wound myself up to curl into you.” She and Rechesthaid have fun with the task of translating those phrasal verbs into sonic movement, tightening and bending an array of synths and strings to the flow of Ives’ unceasing poetry. Resilience curled into a fist, releasing you.
Lana Del Rey, ‘White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter’
Here’s a line taken out of context: “I imagine you do know how absolutely wonderful that you are.” Corny, right? “I love my daddy, of course we’re still together”? Questionable. If a song called ‘White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter’ wasn’t released by Lana Del Rey, I’m sure I’d have no desire to listen to it. I hardly desired listening to ‘White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter’ by Lana Del Rey when it landed on streaming services – a minute or two earlier on Apple Music, as I recall. But I had to, and damn did I love it. Even when making a love song directed at, and co-written by, her “positively voodoo” husband, Jeremy Dufrene, her multiplicity is afoot: she’s still “Lana Del Rey aka Lizzy Grant,” recasting herself as “24/7 Sylvia Plath,” all too aware that “I’ve just been baking” is just one wrong turn away from “Know how absolutely bad I’m with an oven.” More than re-shifting Del Rey’s image, the song works because her collaborators Jack Antonoff and Drew Erickson – especially Erickson with his enchanting string arrangement – are equally invested in capturing this romance’s ghostly magic. You have to hear it to believe it.
MUNA, ‘Dancing on the Wall’
Are MUNA calling ‘Dancing on the Wall’ “possibly our favourite song we’ve made as a band” because it’s an incandescent banger, or did it become one because the subject matter necessitated it? The title track to the trio’s forthcoming album explodes its yearning to compensate for a lover’s empty promises, dedicated to making something so sweet no one could let it go bad. It’s perfectly structured and exacting in its phrasing, landing on the line “I know how to hurt myself on you” at just the right moment in the chorus. There’s no antidote to the pain of being hollowed out, but there’s something to be said about the knowing heart’s attempts at controlling its magnitude and appearance. ‘Dancing on the Wall’ turns the brightness all the way up, giving the fantasy a moment in the spotlight before it peters out.
My New Band Believe, ‘Numerology’
I can think of half a dozen ways to reduce ‘Numerology’ to its contemporary and past reference points, but the maddening song is so lyrically locked into the present that it feels disingenuous. “Real fire is what you feel inside,” sings Cameron Picton of black midi fame, making sure to transfer it onto the new single from My New Band Believe. Buoyed by an array of saxophones atop his acoustic guitar and vocals, the song fizzes up with the possibilities of a single night that could change your life, “one night, when the hollowing” – Picton doesn’t complete the sentence, as if unable to imagine what precisely happens to it but confident that it will. Funnily enough, ‘Numerology’ isn’t even on My New Band Believe, the group’s forthcoming debut LP. It just goes to show what they’re capable of.
