Music

What I’m Listening To — Week of 02/08/2026

Ana George

12 Feb 2026 — 4 min read

I’d like to start a weekly series where every Friday or Saturday I share a little bit about the music that has been on rotation for me throughout the previous week. Music is creative fuel for me. It is my muse, my inspiration, my comfort when I’m in a deep depressive episode, my soundtrack when I realize how beautiful life can be. So it only feels natural to devote some words to music in this space.

These posts aren’t meant to be reviews from an objective lens. What I listen to is often heavily dependent on my moods or, put more bluntly, my mental health in the moment. So these short blurbs will be emotionally charged. I can listen to entire albums, but sometimes I just want to binge a single track on repeat for 6 hours straight on a Tuesday and then do the same to a different track on Wednesday. Sometimes I will post about albums or artists that I have posted about before, maybe because they resonate with me in a different way than they did previously or because they are just that influential that they warrant a repeat mention.

With that said, here we go!

[ALBUM] Space is Hell by The Soviet Space Programme

I’m not one to really enjoy ambient stuff, so this one was an odd pick for me. Five tracks — four of which are over 16 minutes long — of droning ambient soundscapes. But my god — the atmosphere of dread and desolation here. You’re transported to a tiny cramped capsule orbiting the earth, acutely aware of your own existence in isolation, listening to the static of the radio transmissions you sporadically receive from Earth and it dawning upon you that if anything goes wrong you’re in god’s hands. Chills. (Although there’s some dark humor here, as indicated by the song title ‘The Zero Gravity Toilet is Malfunctioning Again’)

[ALBUM] DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS by Bad Bunny

This likely comes as no surprise. I had never heard his music before the Super Bowl Half Time because I live under a pop culture rock, and I decided to give his album a spin after the show because I found it quite enjoyable. And hell yeah, this album is a bop. I’ve had it playing in the background while reading various books this week and it has helped me kind of chill out and vibe in the moment (read: it has kept the brainworms at bay). The only thing I’m not a fan of is that on a couple of tracks, the song will abruptly stop and there will be a moment of silence or maybe a short spoken word segment before the melody kicks back in but different from before. It totally snaps me out of whatever I might be focused on.

[SONG] Zanjeero Se by Bloodywood

This song hits just the right emotional notes for me. It’s a powerful anthem with a chorus that makes you want to raise your fist into the air and bellow along. I actually fell asleep while listening to music on Monday and woke up to this song right as it started to play — it was an awesome experience to listen to it while lying there in bed in my groggy stupor. Totally motivating. It’s been on repeat all week since. I highly recommend reading along with the translated lyrics on Bandcamp while listening.

Within this prisoner
Rages an eternal fire
That will not be extinguished by the weight of
These chains
These chains
These chains

[SONG] Atlantis (2°) by 8485

Really solid, catchy synthpop and another song that makes you want to hum or sing along to. It has a melancholy undertone that reminds me of the feeling you have when you’re approaching the end of a messy relationship and you’ve realized that you’ve become someone different and that ‘… it was never [your] fault’; maybe also the general feeling of sadness when it’s time to transition to a different era in your life and you’re reflecting on what will be necessary to leave in the past.

Now every time I look over my shoulder, there's a hole in the plot
Colours you swore there were not
A curtain coming apart
A picture fading from off the stage and into the backdrop
From which everyone's distracted by a dancer, Spinning out, frantic
Suddenly composing herself like she was a symphony delivered from God
Cause it was never her fault
Now everything that she wants
Is leaping to its feet, receiving her in ecstasy