Irish music is on a roll, with Fontaines DC on the brink of playing stadiums and acts such as Lankum and NewDad putting a new twist on folk balladry and wispy indie rock. But if they are today’s stars, who are tomorrow’s potential break-outs? Here are 22 up-and-comers to keep an eye on through 2025.
Saoirse Miller
Saoirse Miller’s diaphanous music carries echoes of the 1980s indie mystics Cocteau Twins – enlivened with traditional Irish instruments and the occasional tooting saxophone. (Life is always better with more saxophone.) The Dublin singer and producer describes Birds, her debut EP, in highly evocative terms, characterising it as “an electroacoustic journey through themes of death, love and folklore”.
Stella and the Dreaming
Working largely with piano, the Dublin songwriter Stella Hennessy creates spooky soundscapes that recall Phoebe Bridgers and Kate Bush. On her website she paints a gripping picture of her working methods: “From behind a garage door somewhere, stuffed with duvets and carpet-covered frames, I write and record on a stripped-back piano.” Brimming with cinematic ennui, songs such as In Another Life feel custom-drafted to soundtrack moody montages in a Sally Rooney adaptation (“The sweat on the windscreen / For my body aches”). Elegiac and mysterious, they are all you could want from a contemporary songwriter.
TraviS & Elzzz
The drill-rap duo TraviS & Elzzz, who were born in Nigeria and raised in Dublin, make punchy, charismatic music. Part of a larger circuit of rappers and producers styled Gliders, they have already had considerable success, with their LP Doghouse this year becoming the first Irish rap album to top the charts – an achievement they are sure to build on in 2025.
Spider
“Why are you so scared?” the Dublin singer Jennifer Irabor shrieks against a blitz of guitars on her cathartic single America’s Next Top Model. It’s a blistering taster for Spider’s heavy-hitting alternative pop, with lyrics that go hard on themes of sexism and religious guilt. (She was raised in a strict Catholic family.) The Guardian has praised her “dissonant punk energy, bolstered with exquisite, yowling vocals” – and 2025 could be the year the rest of the world catches on, too.
[ Spider: ‘I want to be the biggest rock star in the world’Opens in new window ]
Cardinals
The jangling urgency of early REM is funnelled into soulful Celtic indie pop in the music of Cardinals, who are from Kinsale, in Co Cork. Heralded by NME for their “brooding indie mixed with intense shoegaze”, the five-piece perform songs rooted in their experiences as young people scraping by amid sky-high rents and soaring living costs. Cheerleaders include Grian Chatten of Fontaines DC, who describes the quintet as one of his favourite bands – not that they need anyone to bang a drum on their behalf. “There’s pop there, there’s real vulnerability and it’s honest,” frontman Euan Manning told Rolling Stone. “That’s where we’re coming from right now. We’re a band that is still exploring and creating.”
The Drive
Cork’s flourishing alternative scene is attracting global attention – the indie music-streaming website Bandcamp heralded its music community as “magical” in a love letter to the city. Among the leading lights are The Drive, a goth-pop outfit who have gone from strength to strength despite slimming to a trio from a four-piece in 2023. Steeped in The Cure and My Bloody Valentine, their sound is brooding shoegaze – with vocalist Eoin Murphy adding a satisfying finishing touch by singing in his own accent.
Cliffords
Weavers of gorgeously esoteric soundscapes, Cliffords have been compared to such gallopingly woozy indie acts as Wolf Alice and NewDad. Based in Cork, they are led by the charismatic Iona Lynch, who cites Bridgers, Jeff Buckley and Joni Mitchell as influences. An ethereal band in an ethereal world, they say their mission is to capture “the essence of life, heartbreak and cathartic joy”.
Theatre
So underground that they haven’t released any music yet, Theatre have nonetheless proved a dramatic addition to Irish music since playing their first show, in June 2023. Championed by the Dublin postpunks Gurriers, the Limerick five-piece – led by Maeve O’Shea – specialise in haunting punk-pop, though their influences come from all over. “We seemed to bond over bands like The Pogues, The Cure and even Thin Lizzy,” guitarist Dara Gooney told the Limerick Post.
Meryl Streek
Meryl Streek’s second album, Songs for the Deceased, blends dark, heavy beats with samples of Mary Lou McDonald, the Sinn Féin leader, talking about the housing crisis. There are also stark Whipping Boy-style bangers such as If This Is Life, where the Dublin producer declares his dream to “own a gaff by the sea”. The blend of glitchy grooves and agitprop politics marks Streek – aka the former Ghost Estates drummer Dave Mulvaney – as an Irish equivalent of voguish “Broken Britain” bands such as Bob Vylan and Sleaford Mods. As with those artists, if it were any more on the nose, it would leave the listener with a bruised septum – but a gleeful mischievousness nonetheless ripples through his tunes.
Indrid Cold
In his day job, with the doom-metal band Soothsayer, Liam Hughes’s forte is apocalyptic riffs. For his Indrid Cold side project, the Cork metal musician whips out his wizard’s wand for haunting electronica that evokes images of Nazgûl on the hoof and lonely mountains twinkling in the gloom. He fires on all freaky cylinders with Seven Sleeping Snakes, his 2024 EP, a creepy quartet of instrumentals featuring chilling melodies and brooding Arthurian majesty.
Yard
Pummelling house meets furious guitars from a Dublin trio who suggest an Irish Nine Inch Nails covering Prodigy’s Fat of the Land with a nod towards the yammering Teutonic noir of Moderat. On a mission to “bridge the gap between techno and noise rock”, Yard have performed at the international music showcase festivals Eurosonic and the Great Escape and have supported the London postpunks Shame.
Cruel Sister
Faith Nico started writing songs as an 11-year-old growing up in Dublin. Her stage name comes from a 17th-century murder ballad about a girl drowned by a jealous sister in a love triangle. Her music, however, is a thoroughly modern blend of pop metal, industrial rock and bubble-gum indie that at full pelt suggests wildly left-field Olivia Rodrigo. Described by Image magazine as “hypnotic and ethereal”, she most recently released the punishing Hands, a catchy tune about the dark subject of intrusive thoughts.
Efé
The Dubliner Anita Ikharo, aka Efé, recently signed to Fader, the hipster New York label that discovered the bedroom-pop sensation Clairo. She describes herself as “an indie pop alt (idk) artist” and says, “It isn’t super easy navigating as a black girl in the indie genre, trying to make cute lil songs”. She’s going places in a hurry with her single You Say That I’m Crazy, from October, which charts a course between Beabadoobee, Laufey and a super lo-fi Billie Eilish.
Landless
Méabh Meir, Lily Power, Ruth Clinton and Sinéad Lynch head a doomy folk project that taps into the same ancient energy drawn on so thrillingly by Lankum and Øxn. According to the Guardian, their voices “seem to rise from the sacra of their spines, emerging from their bodies in heavenly flight or heavy drones” – and they’ve already made their mark with their LP Lúireach, from earlier this year, produced by the Lankum collaborator John “Spud” Murphy.
Ellie O’Neill
Plugged into the mysterious otherness of the Irish landscape, Ellie O’Neill’s languid music feels like something from a dream. Or, when the mood darkens, a nightmare. The Co Meath songwriter’s haunting single Bohemia, which she released in October, is a tune that suggests a sumptuously bleak Celtic take on Laura Marling, with lyrics that read like a feverish outtake from The Wicker Man (“Birds of passion circling … prey designed to die”).
F3miii
The Dublin singer and producer F3miii blends vintage beats with Afrobeat energy, topping it off with an expressive voice that suggests a Celtic Frank Ocean. He has racked up millions of streams, played with the Dublin soul crew Bricknasty and was shortlisted by 2FM for its Rising Artists 2025 shortlist.
Yenkee
Humour and sincerity exist in perfect harmony in the songs of the Cork DIY songwriter Graham Cooney, aka Yenkee. With the surreal wit of Sparks and the casual cool of peak Beck, he moved up a gear in 2024 with his excellent debut album, Night Golf, released on Dublin’s Soft Boy Records.
Yunè Pinku
Of mixed Cork and Malay heritage, the London-based singer and producer Asha Nandy is gaining a devoted following for her dense and woozy electronica – imagine Grimes with more consistently brilliant songwriting. She’s already going places, having supported Caribou’s Dan Snaith in the United States. Her recent Scarlet Lamb EP was praised by Pitchfork for conjuring “an alternate ‘90s where The Cranberries’ Dolores O’Riordan sang on Massive Attack’s Teardrop”.
Ezra Williams
Raised in Wicklow, based in Cork, Ezra Williams conquered TikTok when their song My Own Person soundtracked a key scene in the queer drama Heartstopper. You can see why Netflix picked the tune: it’s a beautifully fragile ballad that showcased William’s quietly thunderous vocals – a potential doubled down on with this year’s thrillingly spectral Socks EP.
Deathbed Convert
Organic electronica is the stock in trade of the producer Connor Dougan. He has previously recorded as Ai Messiah and Defcon, but Deathbed Convert feels like a definitive statement by the Belfast composer. Assembled on the Inishowen Peninsula, in Co Donegal, his debut album, Inverse Field Vol 1, captured the wildness and mysteriousness of an Ireland that exists just off the beaten track.
Lullahush
A songwriting vehicle for the producer Daniel McIntyre, Lullahush has been likened to a “glitchier” Vampire Weekend by the UK music site Line of Best Fit. He certainly doesn’t lack ambition. His recent EP An Todhchaí (“Future”) combines synths and trad to delightfully wonky effect. “I believe a holistic marriage of traditional Irish music and contemporary electronica can express a unique perspective on modern Irish identity,” the artist explains.
Róis
The ancient Irish art of funeral keening is revived by the Co Fermanagh singer Rose Connolly, aka Róis. Mo Léan, her 2024 LP, has a droning beauty that feels both ancient and stirringly modern.
