Best Ex – Losing Streak
“’Losing Streak’ is a song about doing the best you possibly can with the cards you’ve been dealt,” says Mariel Loveland of indie-pop project Best Ex.
“Life doesn’t always turn out the way you planned and bad things do happen, but I think being a happy and fulfilled person is all about ‘sifting for gold’ in the mess.” That concept of finding something meaningful amid life’s disappointments sits at the heart of Best Ex’s latest single/video from her forthcoming sophomore album Good Girl (release date: November 6, 2026 via Iodine Recordings).
The song finds Loveland confronting one of adulthood’s most difficult lessons: sometimes the only way forward is to stop trying to control what cannot be controlled.
The accompanying video mirrors the song itself—filmed off-the-cuff, full of movement and humor, and ultimately rooted in the idea that joy can still be found in the middle of life’s chaos. Filmed in and around Hoboken, New Jersey, the video features Loveland dancing through the streets and sneaking onto the field of a local high school (a DIY production made possible with the help of her twin sister while on maternity leave). “It was really one of those things, where you just realize women can do anything,” she says. The production was anything but glamorous with the sisters navigating intense summer heat, unwieldy equipment, and an impressively unconventional obstacle: her sister was simultaneously carrying and operating gear while wearing two breast pumps. Despite the logistical chaos, the experience became something much more meaningful. “In a way, it felt like we were kids again, just making silly things in our room or messing around like when we were freshly 22 and living in our first apartment downtown,” Loveland recalls.
“Losing Streak” embraces the messy reality of being human, rather than getting caught in the endless cycle of wondering what could have been done differently. Loveland reflects on the many ways people attempt to create a sense of control when faced with uncertainty (whether through rumination, anxiety, religion, or searching for signs and meaning in the universe). Ultimately, she arrives at a more liberating conclusion: “Worrying about the things you can’t control does not actually change them or make your life better. This song is about relinquishing that control and trying to find happiness even when times are hard.”
“Losing Streak” follows three previously released singles that have each revealed another facet of Good Girl. The album’s title track, “Good Girl,” established its central examination of womanhood, identity, and the expectations placed on women to define themselves through their relationships to others. While the album’s first preview, “Is This It?”, turned its attention outward, capturing the exhaustion of existing in a world saturated by misinformation, political division, and an unrelenting stream of alarming headlines. With “Sick Of Myself,” the focus shifted inward. One of Loveland’s most vulnerable songs, the track explores the exhausting cycle of anxious self-questioning, insecurity, and second guessing—the fear that the things we worry about ourselves might actually be true.
Written in Brooklyn and Hoboken, NJ with longtime collaborator and producer Andy Tongren (of indie rock band Young Rising Sons and who has produced Lena Leon, Luxtides, and Halsey) over the course of roughly two-and-a-half years, Good Girl is ultimately a record about the strange territory between the adulthood we imagined as children and the adulthood that becomes our reality. The eleven-track album explores anxiety, identity, relationships, loss, friendship, purpose, and the realization that growing older rarely follows a straight line.
#bestexnj