Ready to break through: 14 Irish music acts to watch out for in 2025
Strange Boy, Holly Macve and The Cliffords are included in our ones to watch in the world of music for 2025
Fresh from playing Other Voices in December, Cork five-piece the Cliffords are already ensured of a big 12 months ahead. They’ve been handpicked by Dermot Kennedy for Misneach, his festival taking place on St Patrick’s Day in Sydney, and are playing the SXSW showcase. Led by Iona Lynch, they released debut EP, Strawberry Scented, in April 2024, a couple of tracks reaching skyscraper heights. With another EP planned soon, they couple make like Sprints and enjoy acclaim from all comers. A band to root for.
Limerick rapper Strange Boy aka Jordan McNally Kelly released his debut album in 2021, utilising Irish trad music to accentuate his rhymes. He won the €15,000 Liam O Flynn Award from the National Concert Hall and Arts Council in 2023 and, working with producer and collaborator Enda Gallery, releases second album Say Nothin in early 2025. There’s been one taster so far in the serious and powerful ‘God Help Him (Seemingly He Didn't)’. The album is set to continue his legacy as a truth-seeker and truth-speaker, combining his poetic Limerick accent with themes of personal growth and cultural identity.
Born in the west of Ireland, raised in Yorkshire, and currently based in Los Angeles, Macve makes music a la Lana Del Rey, the US superstar who featured on her 2023 single 'Suburban House'. Macve still seems like one of the best kept secrets in music - she’s released three albums, including 2024’s Wonderland, and looks ready-made for success, with a distinctive style and alluring sound. She’s got a UK tour set for April, including a date at Dublin’s intimate Workman’s Cellar on April 1.
It can be hard to keep up with the Tallaght, Dublin, rapper Gavin Curtis aka Curtisy, who released a deluxe version of his debut album What Was The Question? less than six months after its May release. Still in his mid-20s, he’s collaborated with a whole host of rappers and producers, including Kojaque. Across mostly laid-back bedroom beats, Curtisy takes aim at his whole being as well as wider societal issues. He’s lined up for the Great Escape festival in Brighton in May.
A Dublin-based, French-American musician and composer, Basha was one part of the short-lived vocal harmony trio Rufous Nightjar, alongside Anne-Mieke Bishop. She’s got an album in the can for release in April 2025, entitled Gamble. With a voice compared to an old jazz record, she blends Appalachian mountain songs with Irish traditional music and American blues and ragtime. She released ‘Love is Teasin’’, the first track off the album, in December and says: “It’s about the fear we all have about love – that it can only fade, that it’s fleeting.”
Fermanagh-born, Belfast-based artist RÓIS (Rose Connolly) released her concept EP MO LÉAN in October, a subsequent tour ensuring she has been the word-of-mouth success in the final quarter of 2024. The EP is based around the concept of death, life, mourning, catharsis, and the Irish concept of keening - a woman’s lamenting wail at the side of a coffin during a wake. The music is ethereal and otherworldly, but there is humour on MO LÉAN too, including ‘Death Notices’, which announces: “We’re sorry but there will be no death notices this morning.” Connolly is set to release an album in 2025.
An award-winning instrumentalist and composer from Mayo, focusing on traditional Irish harp, Thornburgh blends family heritage with elements of American folk and jazz. Her debut solo album, Shapeshifter, is due for release on February 12. A collection of compositions deeply inspired by the rich traditions of fairy folklore and mythology from rural Ireland, she says: “I was always fascinated by the fairy fort behind my grandad’s house. A conversation with him about the tale of ‘Mick na mBréag’ (Mick the Liar), who crossed the fairy folk, inspired the composition of a piece that ultimately became part of this album.” This sparked a journey of exploration into the world of fairy lore, which would culminate in Shapeshifter.
We first came across the Fynches at Clonakilty International Guitar Festival 2023, when they played a space that, by the end of the show, it felt they had instantly outgrown. Led by brothers Ferdia and Oisín Walsh-Peelo, the latter has toured and recorded with bands including Villagers, Hudson Taylor, and Bombay Bicycle Club, while the former played the lead role in John Kearney's Sing Street and starred in Coda, which won the Oscar for best picture in 2022. Sounding like a more humble Mumford & Sons, the Cork-based band released a couple of tracks, ‘Too Late’ and ‘Spain’, in late 2024 as they ready for their full debut album in 2025.
Waterford artist Stella Renee Hennessy released three deeply considered songs in 2024: ‘The First Time’, ‘A Short Ballad for Frankie’, and ‘In Another Life’. All tipping in at just over four minutes, they paint a vivid world, her layered vocals playing out over what sounds like a lone piano in a big world. She says: “I write, sing, and produce, recording on a stripped back piano distilling all my influences and obsessions into song-making. I try to give melody a world to live in, surrounded by the drama of keys changing and distorted vocals - that's the Dreaming I guess." It’s one you won’t want to wake up from.
Channelling Fred Again, one of the biggest acts in the world, Olive Hatake makes introspective dance-addled music that lingers long after it’s over. He released his second album Boys Need Love in October, following two years of work on it. He says it addresses the world around him, including the growing right wing movement, the conflict of masculinity, the nature of relationships, faith and a journey into the world of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu that led him to compete in the European championships in Paris in 2024.
Another Cork five-piece, Cardinals are fresh from support duties with buzzy US band Been Stellar and are on tour for most of January, including a date at ones to watch festival Eurosonic in Groningen. Releasing a self-titled six-track EP in June, theirs is a darker sound than city-mates the Cliffords - their black-and-white promo pics could be mistaken for Joy Division. They’ve been hailed by Fontaines DC’s Grian Chatten and Kneecap, singer Euan Manning telling us in May: “I guess we just wanted to do what we wanted to do and distinguish ourselves from what was going on up the country.”
Dublin producer/singer Annie-Dog has named her project after a Smashing Pumpkins song off their beloved 1998 album Adore. She doesn’t quite have Billy Corgan’s angst, having released a string of shoegazey tracks across 2024 - latest single ‘Little Italy’ already sounds like she’s developing in leaps and bounds, going for a suckerpunch of an electro-pop crunch. “I don’t want to talk about my old self,” she sings on ‘Have I Been Living?’ - having played Other Voices and with the Eurosonic showcase coming up, it’s all about the future for Annie-Dog.
Dublin/Sierra Leone rapper Ahmed Karim Tamu is a frequent collaborator with Curtisy and released his debut mixtape in October. Titled like he styles his moniker, it’s called Comma, Fullstop., and came with a full pack of limited-edition Ahmed, With Love. GAA Trading Cards. You’ve got to love that attention to detail and humour, but don’t let it get in the way of the incredibly confident, considered music and downtempo beats.
Dublin-based two-piece Dug aka songwriter Lorkin O’Reilly and California native Jonny Pickett have put in the work in the past 12 months, having formed in 2023. They’ve played support to the likes of Iron & Wine, Willi Carliste across the US, and the trad-metal band the Scratch. Drawing inspiration from Irish and American traditional music, Dug say they aims to create a transatlantic blend that reflects the musical heritages of both members. Their debut single ‘Jubilee’ is a beautiful introduction.
