The Six Alt-Pop Records on Muscle Memories by Toria Rainey, Where Bicycle Boy Leads on Spotify
5 min read
The Six Alt-Pop Records on Muscle Memories by Toria Rainey, Where Bicycle Boy Leads on Spotify
A Sunny-Sounding American Indie Pop Single About Losing Your Own Free Thought
Of the six tracks on Muscle Memories, the EP Toria Rainey released in June, Bicycle Boy has the most Spotify plays, with 10,576. The singer and songwriter from Brooklyn, United States, also put it out first, on 20 February 2026. It is a sunny-sounding single about the worst thing that ever happened to her, and nearly nine months on it is still the way into the record.
Toria Rainey’s Bicycle Boy sits in the playlist below with the rest of this desk’s pop, and the Toria Rainey profile keeps the full run of coverage. Bicycle Boy reached BestMusic.News through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news titles. Press play, then read on for who it is for.
Bicycle Boy by Toria Rainey Suits Listeners Who Like Bright Indie Pop With a Heavy Subject
So who is it for? Start with the gap between how it sounds and where it comes from, which is the most difficult period of Rainey’s life. It is a song about losing the freedom to think for yourself.
Her own description of what she makes covers both sides: indie pop that can sting like an old bruise and still get someone moving around their bedroom. She also builds it from close, small-room pop production with traces of folk and R&B. Meanwhile her voice stays even and calm, so the hard words stay steady.
That pairing has a long line behind it. Robyn released Dancing on My Own on 20 April 2010, a club song about watching an ex with someone else, and it became the model for the sad banger. Years later, Rolling Stone ranked it No. 20 on its list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.
Clairo put out Pretty Girl on 4 August 2017, a bedroom pop song about changing and quieting yourself to please someone. Then the video she filmed on her laptop webcam went viral that month. Bicycle Boy takes something from each of them: Robyn’s habit of dancing through a hard moment, and Clairo’s question of who you are once someone else does the deciding.
Spotify Plays and Early Reviews Shaped the Response to Bicycle Boy
Then came the response, and the ranking is plain. Mosquito, the next most played track on the EP, has 5,607 plays. On Rainey’s whole Spotify page, however, Bicycle Boy is third, behind Love U More, her most played song at 20,011, and 19 from January 2021.
The American songwriter’s catalogue goes back further than most listeners know. Feel arrived in October 2020, and the EP You Would’ve Loved This, built around Boston, followed in September 2023. After that, Glenn, Cowboy Song and Love U More came out across 2025. So Bicycle Boy was her first single of 2026.
The press followed within weeks. Foxfire Magazine reviewed the single in February, and Inspotmusic featured it as well.
After that, the singles kept coming. Ugly Side arrived in March, Mosquito in May and Who I Wanna Be in June, each one a step towards the EP.
The Team Around Toria Rainey on Bicycle Boy, From Tiger Darrow to the Video Crew
Behind the song is a small team. Toria Rainey, credited as Toria Teneal Rainey, wrote the song and sings it, and Tiger Darrow produced it. Darrow is a producer, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who began as a classically trained cellist. She started recording demos of her own songs at 13, on a USB microphone her mother gave her.
The single also arrived with a music video on the same day. Izzy Weinberg directed and edited it, while Emma Howard choreographed it and dances in it with Hali Letlow. Coleman Camp plays the biker, and Big Star Studios produced the shoot.
Muscle Memories followed on 19 June with six tracks, Bicycle Boy among them. Rainey presents the EP as songs about autonomy: how it can be taken from you, tested and turned into something else. It opens on The Scene of the Crime, under a minute and a half long, and finally Theseus closes it.
Start with Bicycle Boy, then play the EP in order from The Scene of the Crime. The single that opened the run in February is still the clearest way in, and the play count shows listeners found it first.
BestMusic.News’s curator team: “We added Bicycle Boy to our Pop, Commercial Pop, Chart Pop playlist. It works on a first listen as a pop song, and once you know the story, a second listen changes it.”
Stream Bicycle Boy on Spotify, Apple Music or Deezer. Follow Toria Rainey on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and her website.
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