‘In Defense of the Genre’: Best Punk & Emo Songs of February

In Defense of the Genre is a column on BrooklynVegan about punk, pop punk, emo, hardcore, post-hardcore, ska-punk, and more, including and often especially the bands and albums and subgenres that weren’t always taken so seriously.

Since we last spoke, Nirvana’s surviving members reunited again (this time with Post Malone singing), blink-182 played a show with Mark, Tom, Travis, and Matt Skiba all on stage at once, Cap’n Jazz announced a reunion tour, Best Friends Forever fest put out an exciting tease, Minus The Bear appear to be teasing a reunion, the almost-full Warped Tour lineup is here, and When We Were Young added a second day. Also, I’m very excited about the amazingly-double-billed High Vis/Militarie Gun tour, which also includes some amazingly-triple-billed dates with Pissed Jeans.

Before we get to my picks of the best songs from February, here are some features and reviews we ran this past month:

* Anxious interview on their great new LP Bambi

* Killswitch Engage’s Jesse Leach picks 10 albums to listen to while on a hike in the woods

* February album reviews: Cloakroom, The Casper Fight Scene, Runaway Brother, Spy, and Church Tongue.

Some new exclusive vinyl we recently launched includes a new pressing of Less Than Jake’s Hello Rockview (apple/lemon/sky blue vinyl), the upcoming Underoath album (various color vinyl), the upcoming Coheed & Cambria album (clear/black/magenta), the 10th anniversary edition of Microwave’s Stovall (blue/yellow/pink), the 25th anniversary edition of H2O’s Faster Than The World (opaque yellow & green), the 30th anniversary edition of Cap’n Jazz’s Shmap’n Shmazz (ice blue), and more.

Head below for my picks of the 10 best songs of February that fall somewhere under the punk umbrella, in no particular order.

Arm’s Length – “Funny Face”

When it comes to emo/post-hardcore that’s heavy but beautiful, gleaming but not overproduced, and with a singer in the upper register who delivers constant catharsis, there aren’t many newer bands right now doing it better than Ontario’s Arm’s Length. I compared their first record to ’10s era bands like Pianos Become the Teeth and The Hotelier and ’00s-era bands like Circa Survive and Thursday (the latter of whom they just wrapped up a tour with), and “Funny Face” off their upcoming sophomore LP (and Pure Noise debut) There’s A Whole World Out There picks right up where the last record left off. Written about “being entangled in a toxic codependent relationship,” it finds Arm’s Length doing what they do best and not fixing what ain’t broke. Singer Allen Steinberg himself calls it “a straightforward, desperate sounding song, sonically and lyrically,” and what makes Arm’s Length so great is that they know how to make the desperation sound so palpable.

Dying Wish – “I Brought You My Soul (Your World Brought Me Despair)”

The first taste of Dying Wish’s as-yet-unannounced third LP finds the Portland, OR metalcore band getting catchier and darker all at once. They’ve been heading in a more melodic direction over the years, and “I Brought You My Soul…” bursts into what just might be their most radio-friendly chorus yet, but it’s also powered by some of the band’s most bludgeoning chugs and the most vicious screams I think I’ve ever heard Emma Boster let out. Matching the dark sonic elements is subject matter that Emma says was inspired by the toll that “constantly witnessing the brutality and injustices” takes on our mental health. “[The lyric] ‘I am miserable yet I am sane’ references that being impacted by these tragedies happening in Gaza and on our own American soil in fact makes us normal,” she says. “I fear that one day we will become numb to the events as they become more violent because we are so conditioned to living with it every day.” That’s a fear that I think a lot of us share right now, and “I Brought You My Soul…” hits hard enough to snap the numbness right out of you.

TRSH – “I Really Am Feeling Better”

15 years ago, The Wonder Years Dan Campbell opened up an album by telling us he’s not sad anymore, and it didn’t take much reading between the lines to realize that, well, yes he is, but there’s power in scream-singing the contrary. Derek Berry of Missouri band TRSH taps into something similar at the start of “I Really Am Feeling Better,” a singalong Midwest emo anthem that’s almost definitely not about feeling better. It’s all high energy until the drums drop out and gang vocal shouts of “I hate myself and I don’t belong here” come in, and the multiple voices lend a layer of comfort to the first-person depression. It takes me back to the communal singalongs on albums like TWIABP’s Whenever, If Ever and Foxing’s The Albatross. Like those bands were back then, TRSH sound ready to bust out of the basement for good.

Club Night – “Palace”

Back in the late 2010s, Oakland’s Club Night caught the tail-end of the emo revival hype train, with an EP and album for Tiny Engines, the latter released shortly before the label was forced into years of hibernation. Singer/guitarist Josh Bertram formed Club Night after the demise of his Animal Collective-y freak folk band Our Brother the Native, and he told Stereogum in 2018 that he considered Club Night a response to the music he had been making in Our Brother the Native, “propulsive and chaotic music” rather than his previous band’s “pile of mush.” The end of Tiny Engines and the 18-month global lockdown coincided with Club Night seemingly disappearing as well, but in actuality, the band was quietly writing new material, and that material now makes up their second album and first in six years, Joy Coming Down, due May 2 via the re-activated Tiny Engines. Lead single “Palace” sounds even more overtly than emo than Club Night’s previous records did, with shouted refrains and big distorted guitars, and going hard suits Club Night well. They’ve still got some art rock and noise pop vibes in the mix too, and I think it’s fair to say that if you’re into Japandroids and Los Campesinos! at their most emo, you’ll be into this.

Catbite – “Die In Denver”

There’s no feeling like when a band you already love takes a creative leap that makes you love them even more, and that’s exactly what Catbite did for me with “Die In Denver.” The Philly ska band made their upcoming Doom Garden EP with illuminati hotties’ Sarah Tuzdin producing, and Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump and Sweet Pill’s Zayna Youssef contributing guest vocals, but nothing sees them bursting through the ska ceiling like new single “Die In Denver” itself. From the crisply-distorted guitars to the glittery synth solo, it’s a big alt-rock anthem with a ska undercurrent that feels destined for crossover appeal. Catbite already helped make the current ska scene what it is, and now they sound ready to transcend any scene altogether.

The Wonder Years – “Junebug”

The third installment of The Wonder Years’ acoustic series Burst & Decay is on the way, and for the first time in the series’ history, it’ll include an entirely new song along with the acoustic versions of older TWY songs, and that new song is “Junebug.” It’s a full-band acoustic song that’s soft and sentimental but still has plenty of energy, and given how genre-diverse The Wonder Years have become, it works as well on Burst & Decay as it would on a “proper” Wonder Years album. Since TWY’s last LP The Hum Goes On Forever, fatherhood has become a big theme in Dan Campbell’s lyrics and “Junebug” finds Dan singing directly to his second son, Jack August Campbell (“I call you Junebug, even though your middle name is August”). The themes in his songs these days are a lot different from the days when he was lamenting not having a family of his own, but one thing remains consistent: the more specific and personal Dan gets with his writing, the more all of us connect to it.

(P.S., like the new Catbite EP, Burst & Decay Volume III also features Sweet Pill‘s Zayna Youssef. Its other two guests are Origami Angel‘s Ryland Heagy and Knuckle Puck‘s Joe Taylor.)

Speedway – “Permission To Dream” (ft. Ekulu’s Chris Wilson)

Speedway hail from Stockholm, Sweden, but they make the kind of melodic hardcore that was born on the East Coast of the U.S., with songs that would sit nicely next to anything from Dag Nasty to Turning Point to newer bands like Praise and One Step Closer. They put out a promising run of EPs, and now they’re set to release their debut full-length album, A Life’s Refrain, on April 11 via the legendary NYHC-centric Revelation Records. Making it even more exciting, it was produced by Ned & Ben Russin of Title Fight (and then mixed and mastered by Arthur Rizk), and Ned’s also one of three guest vocalists on it, alongside Sebastian Murphy of Viagra Boys and Chris Wilson of Ekulu. Chris appears on lead single “Permission To Dream,” a fast-paced, under-two-minute song that makes standing still impossible. Speedway aren’t trying to reinvent the form or anything, but they picked a lane and learned how to do it really, really well.

Tiny Voices – “Backseat Therapist”

Tiny Voices are an emo band from Oshkosh, Wisconsin (are they named after the Box Car Racer song?), and “Backseat Therapist” is the latest taste of their upcoming debut album, Reasons I Won’t Change, due March 14 via PNWK. The band cites seeing a Hot Mulligan show in 2019 as a major reason they formed, they used to fill their sets with Hot Mulligan covers early on, and last year they teamed up with Hot Mulligan’s Chris Freeman on “Yesterday” shortly before opening one of the band’s holiday shows. So it might come as no surprise that Tiny Voices’ own music scratches the gritty, emo-infused pop punk itch that Hot Mulligan are best known for, but Tiny Voices bring their own flair to it, and most importantly of all, their songs bang. “Yesterday” was a great first taste of Reasons I Won’t Change and “Backseat Therapist” just might hit even harder.

SPELLLING – “Alibi” (ft. Turnstile’s Pat McCrory)

The experimental, shapeshifting artist SPELLLING (aka Chrystia Cabral) seems to be taking a rock-oriented turn on her upcoming album Portrait of My Heart, and it features two guest contributors from the hardcore scene, Turnstile guitarist Pat McCrory, and Zulu guitarist Braxton Marcellous. Pat plays on new single “Alibi,” and you can hear him bringing some of that Glow On energy to the song right from the big, thick, palm-muted chords that kick things off. Chrystia says she was channelling Liz Phair for this one, and the result is something that would sound like a lost ’90s grunge-punk classic if Pat and Chrystia weren’t such a strikingly original pair.

No Right – “A Liminal Existence”

The instant connectivity of the internet makes it a little harder for regional scenes to bubble up the way they once did, but they do still exist and right now the Bay Area has one of the best regional hardcore scenes in the country. 17 bands from that scene recently came together with local label Creator-Destructor Records to release Real Bay Shit, a regional-scene-defining comp in the spirit of New York City Hardcore: The Way It Is and This Is Boston, Not L.A. (which will help raise money for a new all ages DIY space in San Jose), and it’s filled with bands we love like Scowl, Spy, Sunami, Big Boy, Spinebreaker, Hands of God, Outta Pocket, Extinguish, Field of Flames, and more. If any one of those bands released a new single there’s a good chance I’d be considering writing it up for In Defense of the Genre, but instead of trying to pick just one of the bands I was already a fan of, I decided to go with a highlight from a band I’ve never written about before, No Right. They’ve been immersed in the Bay Area scene since forming in 2016 (guitarist Charles Toshio is also an engineer who’s worked with Scowl, Spy, Gulch, and several other bands from the Bay) and last year they put out a 2024 promo (with two originals and a VOD cover) ahead of a planned debut LP for Triple B, which new song “A Liminal Existence” has me very excited for. It’s a no-nonsense hardcore rager that’s equally indebted to metallic riffage and punk attitude, and vocalist Sierra Stark has a ferocious, expressive bark that cuts through the mix and helps No Right stand out from the pack, in the Bay and beyond.

—

Here’s 5 more – February was a busy month!

Heart Attack Man: “Spit” – Who else can evoke Sum 41 and Quicksand all at once?
EYES: “Better” – Members of LLNN, sounds like Converge meets Every Time I Die
John Galm: “Summer After Work” – Snowing’s singer in his Elliott Smith/Sufjan era and it suits him well
The Callous Daoboys: “Two-Headed Trout” – The Daoboys went full Y2K alt-metal and it whips
Treaty Oak Revival: “Bad State of Mind” – When the country song has a Midwest emo riff >>>

—

In an effort to cover as many bands as possible, I try to just do one single per album cycle in these monthly roundups, so catch up on previous months’ lists for even more (including Saetia, Superheaven, Scowl, Spy, and more):

* Best Songs of January

* Best Songs of December

* Best Songs of November

* Best Songs of October

* Best Songs of September

For even more new songs, listen below or subscribe to our playlist of punk/emo/hardcore/etc songs of 2025.

—

Read past and future editions of ‘In Defense of the Genre’ here.

Browse our selection of hand-picked punk vinyl, including our exclusive Cap’n Jazz variant and here’s yours truly giving you a look at that one:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by BrooklynVegan (@brooklynvegan)