With a new generation of artists – Fontaines D.C., Kneecap, Lankum, Sprints, The Murder Capital and more – going from strength to strength, both at home and internationally, the Irish music scene has never been been stronger, more diverse, or more fertile. And another new wave of excellent bands is set to surge into view over the coming 12 months.
Here are ten of the best new artists on the island worth investigating now before the masses inevitably catch on.
Ria Rua
“My hope is that my music helps people exorcise their demons,” says Meath-born Ria Rua, and the drummer-turned alt.rock star pulls no punches on her forthcoming debut album SCAPEG.O.A.T., not least on current single Black And Tan, a song about “the rise of the modern sociopath”, drawing parallels between Donald Trump and Elon Musk and the much-hated Black and Tans, a British paramilitary group infamous for their violence and brutality during the Irish War of Independence. Drawing influences from Nine Inch Nails, Sonic Youth and Bjork, the buzz aound Ria Rua (‘Red Queen’) will be amplified from a whisper to a scream this year.
Hotgirl
Signed to Cartoon Records late last year having acquired a reputation as one of Dublin’s fiercest new live bands, Hotgirl – Ashley Abbedeen (vocals/guitar), Sophie Boxwell (lead guitar), Jake Hurley (bass) and Nick Stanley (drums) – will release their new EP Blast Off next month. They’re influenced by everything from ’90s grunge and punk to Noughties pop, and Abbedeen describes their sound as “like soundtrack music for a 90’s/2000’s coming of age movie.”
Cardinals
Back in the summer of 2023, Fontaines D.C. frontman Grian Chatten talked up Cardinals as one of his favourite new Irish bands, selecting them to appear on his Future Artists Mixtape playlist on BBC Radio 1. The Cork band’s debut self-titled EP, released last summer, saw them moving away from their post-punk roots in favour of a more melodic, less easily pigeonholed indie rock sound. Talking to Rolling Stone UK, frontman Euan Manning explained, “It’s noise music and if you can see past that sort of like, chaos and stuff, it’s just very warm.” Just returned from showcasing at the SXSW music fest in Texas, the sextet play various UK festivals over the coming months.
Adore
Having released two excellently spiky singles last year – Supermum! and Can We Talk – Galway alt. rockers Adore released first new music of 2025, last month, in the form of Stay Free Old Stranger, a song bandleader Lara Minchin wrote when she was 16, inspired by Le Tigre, Frank Iero and Sleater-Kinney, to give herself strength at a time when she was feeling like “a freak”.
“The lyrics are juvenile,” she freely acknowledges. “They are telling the story of being aware that some people might not care for you and that’s okay because you don’t have to care for them either. You don’t have to be everybody’s friend.”
Efé
Efé’s debut EP What Should We Do This Summer, released back in 2020, was recorded in her bedroom in Dublin, and there are similarities to ‘bedroom pop’ trailblazers Beabadoobee and PinkPantherness in her more recent singles, such as 2000SEVEN and you say that I’m crazy. Now signed to cool US label Fader, the singer (Anita Ikharo) told the Irish Times last year, “In earlier projects I was scared to go full force with the rock sound, but this year I thought, let me just do it. It has been rewarding.”
Dea Matrona
Dea Matrona’s Orláith Forsythe and Mollie McGinn met at school as teenagers, and have gone from busking on the streets of Belfast to sharing a bill with Shania Twain at the huge BST Hyde Park festival in London. Influenced by Led Zeppelin, Royal Blood, Fleetwood Mac, Haim and more, there’s a genuine swagger to their velvety hard rock sound. The duo play London’s Royal Albert Hall with The Corrs on March 28, and have European shows with The Darkness and Royal Republic later this year.
![Dea Matrona - Red Button [Live In Brighton] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/8qVenW1Nu8c/maxresdefault.jpg)
Cliffords
Fronted by the brilliant Iona Lynch, Cliffords are another new band emerging from Cork’s fecund indie-rock community. Taking inspiration from Radiohead, Phoebe Bridgers, The Cure, Wolf Alice and homegrown heroes Fontaines D.C., the quintet were recently hailed by Rolling Stone as “the next great guitar band to emerge from Ireland”, and as they’ve a UK headline tour coming next month, and a stack of festival appearances lined up for the summer, this is a perfect time to discover their electrifying alt. rock sound.
Peer Pleasure
“Bad men, worse tunes” is the self-deprecating tag that Enniscorthy, Wexford’s Peer Pleasure wear as a badge of honour, and if you have a weakness for filthy, noisy, and joyously unhinged garage punk in the style of Viagra Boys, Fat White Family and The Jesus Lizard, these reprobates have you covered. Current single Pedestrian shifts from dismissing various singer/songwriters as “relatively pedestrian” to accusing some very famous men of being “nonces”, so we suggest checking them out before they’re sued out of existence. A debut album will emerge later this year: consider yourself fore-warned.
Sister Ghost
Strictly speaking, Sister Ghost, aka Derry’s Shannon Delores O’Neill, is not a new artist – she has singles on bandcamp dating back to 2015 – but her debut album Beyond The Water was released on Snow Patrol frontman Gary Lightbody’s Third Bar label just last October. There are nods to Nirvana, The Breeders, Sonic Youth and other ’90s alt.rock heroes throughout its 12 tracks, and songs such as album opener She’s Wild are loud and unapologetic blasts of feminist empowerment. “We live in a patriarchal and white supremacist world that tells anyone in the margins to be quiet, to be docile and dull their spark,” O’Neill told LouderThanWar in October, “so this song is like a fuck you to that.”
Thumper
Once again, Thumper don’t qualify as a brand new artist – we suggested you should be checking them out back in 2023 – but the reason we’ve included them here is that they previewed 10 songs from their as-yet-untitled second album at an intimate gig in London last summer, and it sounded fantastic, so as a public service announcement, we’re putting them back on your radar once again. As yet, there’s still no word on when said album will emerge, but trust us, when it does, it’ll be well worth the wait.
