I’m not going to go into the reasons why this is so late, but I started this such a long time ago now, half of the bands have probably released more music or split up since but hey, as the saying goes, I’ve started, so I’ll finish…
February seems a long time ago and a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then. And as you can see from this second part of the singles for the month, there was a lot to digest including a few new releases from bands who feature on the “You are Here – The New Sound of Scotland” CD (yes, I know… I’m awaiting delivery of said CD, once they are in my grubby mitts they’ll be unleashed on an unsuspecting public….) including the the force to be reckoned with that is Sister Madds and the lead single from their debut EP, and new singles from Martha May and the Mondays, Quad 90, Too Red and Pedalo. I’d like to think that, when it eventually sees the light of day, this CD release is a success, it could be the first in a series (he says trying to forget the stress that pulling this one together caused, learn and move on Neil, learn and move on…), the new music scene in Scotland is in such fine fettle I’m sure I could fill numerous volumes… just look at how many cracking singles from young Scottish bands are in this round up and in the following list for March.
First up is a new single from one of Glasgow’s treasures in the shape of Oh Yeah from Carla J Easton back to releasing music in her own right after focussing her energies on the brilliant Since Yesterday documentary shining a light on all the brilliant music to come from Scottish women and contributing to the excellent Hen Hoose Collective album reviewed here. Oh Yeah is the first song to come from the new album, I Think That I Might Love You, and has Carla stepping out from behind her keyboards and picking up a guitar for the first time (also giving her a humorous tale to share on buying her first guitar with Eugene from The Vaselines) and in doing so creating a sublime sub 2 minute song packed with an energetic bombast.
I’ve already reviewed the brilliant sophomore album, Hagridden, from Bratakus, so it will be no surprise that Tonight features in the February round up… the full album review can be found here
Somehow it has passed me by that The Enemy had a new album released in February and they had already released a swathe of singles ahead of this. The most recent of which, The Boxer was actually released in January but, as I took my eye off the ball, it’s here in all its glory…
Try not to get carried along by the exhilarating Lonely Girl from Lucia & the Best Boys, a rhapsodic melody and bullishly sanguine lyrics delivered by both Lucia and guest vocals from Chvrches Lauren Mayberry will have you feeling you can take on the world.
On the subject of loneliness and collaborations, Anna Calvi & Iggy Pop released the menacingly intense God’s Lonely Man in February, the single announces it’s arrival with a boisterous glam stomp topped with distorted discordant noise and then continues to thunder along ploughing it’s furrow with a darkly powerful severity.
In my humble opinion Sister Madds are one of the most exciting bands on the scene at the moment, (hence their inclusion on the You Are Here CD release) with live shows that always hit the mark and a ever growing line in addictive singles of which they have added to with their most recent offering, Table Manners in which Maddie uses a food allegory to take a swipe at the pitfalls of modern online dating, and the all take no give nature of the resulting relationships. The thinly veiled contempt in the lyrics alongside her acerbic witty delivery really hit the mark, and the accompanying riff heavy soundtrack creates a furious vitality to match.
If you were at the recent Scotland V England rugby match at Murrayfield you’ll hopefully have caught The Laurettes entertaining the crowds outside the venue. Now that the rugby is past, and the World Cup approaches, the band will be playing a gig with Skerryvore in Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom on the 23rd of May, a gig at which I’m certain their latest single Love Letter to Glasgow will go down a storm.
I’ve been fortunate to hear the debut self-titled album from Brontes and the result has been that it has never been far from my ears, such is it’s prepossessing beauty and addictive appeal. Ahead of it’s release in April and following up the sublime San Francisco single is the foot-tapping sun-drenched driving melody of Wouldn’t Be Me, Brontes exude an effortlessly cool on this advice to a friend to kick a useless bloke to the kerb and not settle for second best. Charmingly suave and elegance personified.
Keeley who has released what is sure to be one of the albums of 2026 in Girl on the Edge of the World (reviewed in full here) continued to release videos/singles for songs from the album including the fervent intensity of Crossing Lands, it’s incisive clipped guitar riffs and brusque and ruthless rhythm section perhaps reflecting the increased anticipation and heightened emotional state of an excited teenager as she realises her plans to travel around Europe are finally coming to fruition “I’m between states, changing shape… I am girl with a taste for the world.” Keeley links back to earlier songs with the “totally entranced” lyric as she recounts Inga’s exploration of herself as well as her trip. The indie dream pop come shoegaze influence from the likes of Lush is clear with Miki adding her unmistakable ethereal vocals on Big Brown Eyes, certainly one of the album highlights as the instruments build and layer to a divine zenith.
With an intro packed to bursting with handclaps and channelling Toni Basil’s Mickey I, Doris, who are no strangers to creating the odd banger or two are at it once again on the brilliant Superduperdoris, another addictive alt pop gem with a rhythm that gives superhero vibes and accordingly celebrates Dorises everywhere. It feels appropriate that this single is in the same round up as Interrobang!? and their single Manosphere, with one bigging up the Dorises and the other taking aim at toxic masculinity.
Good Boy is the third single to come from Saint Agnes from their new album Your God Fearing Days Are About To Begin coming in May and has the band on scathing form on this searing industrial-electro rock takedown of corporate yes men.
From their February released album Tears Before Bedtime comes this single from Would Be Goods, Tears for Leda is the band’s cleverly humorous indie-pop take on the tale of Zeus seducing Greek Goddess Leda while disguised as a swan. When you add that to the band’s previous singles the dark majesty of Dr Love and it’s predecessor The Gallopers, this makes the album an essential listen.
I never got around to reviewing the superb FiniTribe compilation The Sheer Action of Fini Tribe – 1982 – 1987 which was released in October last year. I need to rectify this by including this track, Me and My Shadow, written when the band were still at school, which was released in February with a new lyric video to go with it.
Kim Gordon questioned our AI future on Dirty Tech, the sparsely arranged electro-clash of the second single from her forthcoming album Play Me.
Heavenly continue to delight on their return with the latest single the upbeat and seemingly demure Scene Stealing from their first album in 30 years, Highway to Heavenly, dig deeper into the lyrics and the video and there is warning at it’s core.
Patsy Kensit has been a part of Lemon Drink‘s live repertoire for some time now, maybe as far back as 2023 (he says quickly checking previous live reviews…), but it is only now that they’ve committed it to tape (I know that makes me sound ancient but I can’t think of how to put it in the virtual world where nothing seems to exist in reality…). Anyway, all of that aside, and however long we’ve had to wait for the song to finally be released as a single, it was more than worth the wait. The song about unsavoury men with inflated egos and ideas above their station, based on singer Sophie’s personal experience with an ex-boyfriend of her mum and his Twitter feed, blends razor sharp acerbic witty lyrics with an assured laid back melodic groove that builds through the song, taking flight and floating gloriously into the ether.
Caramel, the new single from Kohla released in February lives up to it’s title, as it is as smooth as silk, with an arrangement that is affectingly sparse allowing space for Rachel’s sensitively soulful vocal to shine.
Louche and laidback, Squirm, the latest single from The Violets is welcomingly shambling, encouraging you to bathe in it’s full louche glory, losing yourself in the song, which sounds like the musical equivalent of a long lazy, hazy summer’s day.
With her second single from her Wytchwound project, Eve continues to raise awareness of Scotland, and in particular, Fife’s darker history, focussing on the lost voices of women persecuted and murdered as part of the witch trials. The focal point of Edge of Never is the story of Issobell Kelloch whose tale is told sensitively and affectingly through this hauntingly soulful folk song.
Released on Valentine’s Day, I Fell in Love With a Rockstar from Edinburgh’s Dark Hearts is an instantly catchy retro rock tribute to all the great female rock star icons out there, probably the the one’s who are responsible for members of many of the band’s that feature on these pages to first pick up a microphone, a guitar or a pair of drumsticks.
Verse Metrics debut single release Sea Fairies (We’re Not Alone In This Lake) comes from their soon to be released album Descents and it’s a complex many layered, multi-textured blink and you’ll miss something behemoth of a tune, just revel in the glory of the mid-song instrumental break and you’ll see what I mean. The widescreen bombastic nature of the music is matched with an earnestly delivered vocal not unlike White Lies or The Editors, this song bodes well for the album to come.
Great Dane is the latest single release from Manchester indie shoegaze/dream pop band Cruush, with distorted in your face guitars announce it’s arrival, and form the basis of this potent mix of hard and heavy driving riffs and dreamy ethereal vocals.
Hey Soldier from The Cides takes pot shots at the IDF and the Zionist regime they represent for the war crimes perpetrated and the targeted deaths of innocent children, the song borrows heavily from Pink Floyds The Wall and keeps a focus on the continued persecution of Gazan’s despite a so-called ceasefire which seems to mean that news corporations have forgotten about the plight of Palestine.
Still going strong Hanoi Rocks frontman Michael Monroe has recently released another new album of glam punk songs in Outerstellar from which Shinola comes. His familiar tones atop bouncing vibrant riffs courtesy of Steve Conte and Rich Jones with a singalong chorus “you don’t know shit from shinola” tick all the boxes.
Picture It Backwards is the first release of 2026 for Pedalo and heralds what is sure to be a great year for the band if this single is anything to go by, a delicate acoustic introduction building to sweepingly majestic keyboard backed vocals from Charlotte interspersed with crashing cymbals and sonorous guitar based interludes.
Following up the brilliant kylie’s put a curse on us from their equally humorously (and pessimistically) titled forthcoming album i don’t think you want to hear this comes french blue by wojtek the bear, the song whose lyrics give the album it’s title. While the album’s title may have a humorous self-deprecating pessimism to it, and there may be more than a hint of melancholic fatalism in the lyrics at the start of the song, this turns to hopeful optimism and it is this that is reflected in the music and the arrangement of the single which, to coin a phrase is quite frankly divine. The song has a subtle understated beauty to it, a gentle gossamer smooth melody with an exquisite brass accompaniment makes for an optimistic soul soothing gem.
Never Been Better is February’s defiant offering from Minneapolis three piece Vial ahead of their fourth album, Hellhound scheduled for a March release.
The Foot and Leg Clinic the band formerly known as Wife Guys of Reddit released their debut single Where Did All the Fruit Go? from their album Sit Down for Rock n Roll, and it was a splendid taster for what is an impressive album. As you would expect from the band, the single is a bit off the wall, quirky and idiosyncratic, with fruit used as an analogy for all the thinks to be achieved in life, and a realisation that not all plans and dreams come to fruition. The song uses an effective dual vocal delivery, with Arion’s vocal given an element of distortion to match the jangling fuzzy guitars.
Gypsy Pistoleros continued to raise anticipation levels for their new album Dark Faerie Tales with the magnificent hook laden hard rocking single Prince of the Damned, yet another slice of darkly majestic bombastic gothic glam, laced with a brass section for that extra level of charm and including a hypersonic mid-song break. The album is sure to be an exhilarating thrill ride.
And talking of dark majesty, the phrase could equally be used to describe Rudy, the latest single from Whissker, a song which starts off low key, a brooding low key hum that soon bursts into a tense crashing guitar melee that in parts sounds like early Swervedriver, the loud quiet loud interchange continuing before the song takes on a whole new dimension as the demeanour of the vocals and instruments take on a new intensity as the outro crashes together with a edgy skittish energy.
From the new Louise McCorkindale & Vitaliy Tkachuk album, From the Wild Seas Edge, comes the single My Only Sorrow, a thought provoking essay on life ending and leaving loved one’s behind, the song has a suitably haunting melody on delicately played instruments, with angelic backing vocals providing a celestial soundtrack to the heartbreaking lyrics.
Forlorn from Glasgow band Rufus Case Stone initially has an elegantly subdued late night jazz club feel to it, a subtle melody backing an ethereal vocal before the song builds and the band create a multi layered, warmly textured sound which loses none of it’s initial subtle charm.
Corrine are building quite an impressive back catalogue of singles, the latest of which is new song Wait. The song blends a driving rhythm section and bruising guitars to create an evocative melody to create a perfect synergy with the mesmeric soul-stirring vocals.
Not to be mistaken for The Poison Girls, Glasgow’s The Poison Sisters are back with a cracking new single, in the shape of the pacey garage fuzz of Blister My Paint. The bands 1995 track, Chicane, from their EP of the same name also features on the upcoming Scottish 1990’s indie compilation Something for the Longing compiled by Grant McPhee.
Probably landing on the poppier side of the songs that appear in these singles round ups, alongside the likes of the Daydreamers single also appearing this month is the exuberantly uplifting debut single with a splendidly hooky riff, Nothing Quite Like You, from Scout Coast
Talking of hooks, if you want a gloriously joyful earworm, That Thing from Glasgow based sound system, the legendary Mungo’s Hi Fi ft. Aziza Jaye is the single for you, a compellingly addictive toe-tapping relationship health warning, the chorus has been stuck in my head for days now.
I’ve had the good fortune of witnessing a stripped down version of Marigold play at a Girl’s Rock Glasgow event in Bloc+ and was mightily impressed, so it is with great pleasure I am including the bands latest offering, the gently alluring all i see is her now, a sympathetically played spellbinding melody that complements perfectly the beguilingly enchanting multi layered vocal. Hypnotic and absorbing in the extreme.
Trashcan Sinatras are a band I have loved from their inception and despite the lack of gigs in recent years, they are probably still the one of the band’s I’ve seen for most live. The Bitter End demonstrates everything I’ve ever loved about this band, with a graceful multi-layered melody to die for, so immediate and hook laden that it stayed with me for days after I first heard it, and s I come to love and expect from the band, sophisticated and thoughtful lyrics that paint pictures and grab you, gently of course, and pull you into their world. This song is like a much needed warm hug from an old friend.
Born to Kill heralds the long overdue return of Social Distortion, driving guitar riffs welcoming in that familiar gruff vocal from Mike Ness the single bodes well for the album of the same name due in May, their first since 2011’s Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes.
With riffs as sharp as their suits The Hives do what they do best on this high energy single, Roll Out the Red Carpet, from their latest album The Hives Forever, Forever The Hives.
The hypocrisy of war and the criminalisation of those who protest against it is tackled in the brilliant single, Sink Dogs from one of Glasgow’s hot properties, and electric live acts, Martha May & the Mondays. The single is laced with a bristling menace thanks to the clever use of discordant trumpet and violin, the song smoulders and burns with a righteous anger as it explodes with a seething rage, Martha’s spitting out the vocal’s with a venomous rancour.
From the forthcoming album from Where We Sleep, The Scars We Leave, comes the brooding single Broken Bones. The spellbinding minimalistic arrangement and the deliberately provocative lyric “it wasn’t the rib it was the backbone” delivered with a breathless quiet assertiveness make this an essential listen.
M John Henry has reworked and re-released De Rosa’s 2006 single Evelyn stripping it right back and in doing so creating a song of heart-aching beauty, just Henry and acoustic guitar at it’s core and with a minimalistic arrangements that really captures the purity and the essence of the song.
It’s only taken Mackenzies 40 years to release their debut album having released their first single in April 1986. Given the songs they have released so far, November’s Blow By Blow and this single, The State I’m In a jarringly discordant, jagged and angular slice of jazz/funk post-punk, that shapeshifts constantly throughout, the album, A Dogs Breakfast will be well worth the wait.
We Three Kings do what they do best on Shotgun, with another three minute slice of breakneck incendiary ballsy rock, there is no standing in ceremony, the band are primed and ready, with strafing guitars and lyrics spat out rapid-fire.
San Jose really are a force to be reckoned with, as Scotland’s answer to The Fat White Family they have released yet another majestically sprawling anthem of several parts in the politically charged mighty new single The Bastards. A plaintive piano opens the song before one of my favourite opening couplets since The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Snakedriver “There’s no neighbour’s like the one’s down south, they’ll kick you to the ground and leave their foot in your mouth – it tastes good…” The song then opens up and takes flight into the ether with a melody that weaves and sways with graceful ease, a shambling swagger in their step, with a power in the epic song that belies its seeming nonchalance. A spoken word break as the song reaches its conclusion gives way to a sinisterly clamorous melange of discordant noise. Utterly magnificent.
On Opaque Quad 90 take their lyrical inspiration from Carly Simon “you’re so opaque, I bet you think this is all about you” and the musical inspiration clearly comes from a similar source as Texas borrowed from for Summer Son when they went down the soulful ABBA/Disco route.
Glasgow duo Too Red continue to impress on this latest single, Taste, a muscular and potently energetic rocker that has them continuing on their ascendency.
The reflective slow burn of The Age of Bronze from Death of the High Street is an earnestly stirring song that builds and layers into a huge sweeping anthem that recalls a time of those big bombastic songs in the 80s from the likes of U2, The Alarm and their ilk.
pieces is the second single from the second EP from thistle. The EP, backflip, comes out at the end of May and if this single is anything to go by it will be an essential listen. pieces arrives in a cloud of fractious guitar noise before the swell of noise quells and it follows a loud quiet loud template, finishing the way it came in with a climax of clamorous guitar squall.
Dunstan Bruce is angry and he doesn’t hide it as Interrobang?! take on the Manosphere and pretty much tear apart these inadequate misogynistic vile tiny-cocked reptiles never missing his target once in a tirade that lists every one of their toxic traits, set to a incessant electroclash soundtrack. “Men going their own way? Go on then men – Off you jolly well fuck…”
Clay Rings Day After Day has a bluesy feel both musically and in its mood, it’s lyrical theme of just making it from one day to another and working out what you want from life, there is a polished melancholic symmetry between words and music before the song closes out with a glorious instrumental zenith.
Exhausted from Falkirk band Static is probably the strongest of their songs to date, with an unerring pedal to the metal breathlessness, the song is an immediate zero to sixty all cylinders firing aural assault, with lyrics just as ferociously savage and unswerving as the powerful driving melody.
To follow on from the inclusion of Yama Rama in the last round up, here are the other two songs they released as a follow up, and as I listen to these again, I regret even more being unable to attend their last Glasgow gig. I’ll be sure to be on the lookout for new dates…
A couple of atmospherically haunting folky ballads from Madeline Tully in the shape of A New Light & Silvermoon, both songs can be found on her latest album, also called A New Light, out at the end of March via Bandcamp.
Conscious Pilot‘s contribution to the February round up is their furiously energetic and highly infectious single, Internet Support, packed with razor sharp guitar riffs and jaggedly pointed vocals.
This single was released at the start of February 2026, as I write this, the message of the song has taken on an increased significance as Trump continues his one man crusade to destroy the planet by starting another war on Iran, War on War from Frenchy & the Punk urges us all to take a stance against all wars “one voice, two voices, three thousand more… hear our voices as we roar …. we declare war on your wars”
The last word for February goes to Glasgow’s Dad’s Best Friend and their single Blackjack, an assured and gutsy rock anthem packed with boisterously rollicking riffs.
Here is the entire February Playlist on Tidal for you to enjoy…