NPR Music Andrew Bird on ‘The Pitt,’ Gia Margaret and more of the best new songs
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Feb 17, 2026 Dora Levitt, NPR Music contributor and New Music Friday curator, shares her latest obsessions. They talk shoegaze textures from Draag. They explore Mandy, Indiana’s unsettling dystopian sounds. They discuss Andrew Bird’s tender song for The Pitt. They highlight Ratboys’ emotional builds, Gia Margaret’s layered vocals after voice loss, and By Storm’s reinvention.
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Modern Shoegaze Resurgence
- Draag (Drog) blends shoegaze textures with drifting, thunderous guitars to render complicated feelings like grief and anxiety as beautiful soundscapes.
- Robin Hilton highlights a modern shoegaze resurgence that mixes metallic crunch with ethereal ambience.
Authority Framed Through Samples
- Mandy, Indiana fuses samples and industrial textures to interrogate authority and the pressure to perform identity.
- Dora Levite hears parental authority in the recurring sample “Honey, is that you?” which frames youthful dystopian anxieties.
Song Written For The Pit
- Andrew Bird wrote a short, poignant song called 'Need Someone' specifically for an episode of The Pit that aired February 12th.
- Robin Hilton describes the song as moving, centered on being remembered and needing someone to 'cry for you in the by and by.'