Dave Grohl Talks New Foo Fighters Album and Taylor Hawkins

By Editorial Staff | Published: Feb 21, 2026 12:31 PM EST

Earlier this week the Foo Fighters announced that they are releasing a new studio album entitled "Your Favorite Toy" on April 24th and frontman Dave Grohl celebrated the news by talking to Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1.

The show sent over these details and some excerpts from the conversation: Dave sits down with Zane to discuss the band's upcoming 12th studio album, Your Favorite Toy.

In the conversation, Grohl opens up about how the record came together, sharing how quickly the group recorded it and why it was important to make an album that still makes the band smile and jump around after more than 30 years together. He also reflects on the enduring spirit of the Foo Fighters and pays tribute to their beloved late drummer, Taylor Hawkins, honoring his lasting impact on the band's sound and brotherhood.

Dave Grohl on how the new album, Your Favorite Toy, came to fruition: "For the last year and a half, I was spending a lot of time in my studio just writing and experimenting and demoing things and I'd come up with maybe like 30 or 40 different ideas. One night I was listening to all these ideas and just randomly there were these 10 songs in a row in my playlist that were all just like noisy, loud bangers. Up-tempo, like back to the old days. I was like, wait a minute, maybe this is the record. There was other stuff that sounded like Led Zeppelin's Presence and then there was stuff that sounded kind of mellow acoustic, but I was listening to this playlist and these 10 [songs] in a row and I'm like, this is the record right here."

Dave Grohl on the intention behind making an album 30+ years into the Foo Fighters career: "I got to this place where I was like, okay, so what's the intention? What's the ambition? Like what are we? It's our 12th record. We've been a band for 30 years and as people, we're evolving and we're growing. Where do we go from here? What do we do? And that's when all the boundaries just sort of fall away and that's where you realize the intention and the ambition is all within yourself. So, whatever's going to make us jump around and smile and scream... and that's the purest intention. And we found it in this song. And this particular song was the springboard for the rest of the record. When we hit this, it was like we hit this little vein of gold and were like, that's the feeling, that's the vibe, that's the energy. And then we just blasted everything out in like three or four weeks."

Dave Grohl on losing Taylor Hawkins, Foo Fighters drummer of 25 years: "We had Taylor Hawkins as our drummer for 25 years and, beyond being an amazing drummer, he was this incredible spirit. He was this incredible human being and he was our brother. He was our best friend. So, continuing after Taylor was really complicated, not just for us, but for any drummer that was going to come in to like, you know, fill his shoes... you know, we're having this conversation on Taylor's birthday. It's Taylor's birthday today. And so, we wake up in the morning and everybody just texts about how much we miss him and how the world's not the same without him, but we still feel him very much. We always talk about him every f***ing day. In everything we do we want to have that energy -- we want to have that energy for Taylor." Listen to the full interview here