The best new Irish songs this week feature emerging tracks we’ve selected from artists from the island of Ireland, with more recommendations below.
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For more extensive Irish and new music coverage, read the Irish section for individual track features.
Therapy Horse
MY TONGUE / MY TEETH
The Cork/Limerick trio have been building a formidable reputation since their 2025 debut single and ‘MY TONGUE / MY TEETH’ is a ferocious song that opens with the lyric ““does it turn you on? / When I speak in tongues.””
With members hailing from Irish alt-rock shoegaze act Pebbledash, Therapy Horse forge a sound that channels Wednesday, My Bloody Valentine and Chelsea Wolfe, and on this one they’re citing Teenage Jesus and the Jerks as a more direct touchstone – a no-wave noise rock onslaught tracked mostly live with producer Andy Killian (PrettyHappy) to capture the full deafening intensity they bring live.
Cormac Donovan O’Neill: “everything is in high-gear from start to finish.”
The breakdown features a bitcrushed, reversed scream that gives it a genuinely chaotic texture in the vein of YVETTE or Gilla Band.
Upcoming Dates
- 23/10/26- Oh Yeah Centre, Belfast*
- 24/10/26- Monroe’s, Galway*
- 27/10/26- Whelan’s Upstairs, Dublin*
Anna’s Number
Simple Change
Belfast band Anna’s Number recall a specific time in indie music around 2006 to 2009 when Kitsuné Maison compilations were at their height of influence.
The urgent and tense neon electronic indie pop of ‘Simple Change’ would have been a shoo-in those compilations but it still sounds fresh and perhaps refreshingly out of step with the more shoegaze-saturated music scene at the moment.
Bonus points for the breakdown that leads into the sax line.
MOIO
Just A Man
MOIO continues his come up with ‘Just A Man’ which draws on Frank Ocean vocals meets speckled indie rock texture.
“It’s about expectations,” MOIO says. “You’re in a relationship and you’re self-aware enough to know you can’t give love the way your significant other deserves to be loved. You’re being honest and saying, “I wish I could be that person, but it’s not who I am right now’.”
MOIO is currently supporting Irish band Florence Road on their European and UK tour that includes Dublin’s 3Olympia on May 27th. He also plays the main stage at Forbidden Fruit Festival on Sunday May 31st.
Dumb Posh Hippies
Doomer
The Dublin grage punk trio Dumb Posh Hippies dropped a double A-side single vibe – “two heavy ones”, produced by Darragh Hansard of Unique Freaks’).
‘Doomer’ is a fine slice of wry garage psych music that has an exhilarating switch-up just over two minutes in.
I loved their 2023 EP The Kings Of Kimmage and ‘Scrunched Up Fists’.
Lemoncello
Tomorrow Nostalgia
I’m still getting acquainted with Lemoncello’s Perfect Place which came out last week. This song ‘Tomorrow Nostalgia’ features on it and was a choice of Lauren Kennedy in this week’s podcast and its dreamy hazed indie folk is a winner – it’s got a particularly Irish point of view – a nostalgic look back at teenagedom (underscored by the Eilís Doherty video with backdrops of specific places in which the band can point to essential places of teenage memory.
“This song goes deep into the nostalgia of our teenage years,” they said on Instagram. “In that era there’s a constant drive to push forward, a relentless hope, dreaming about tomorrow. That rush to get through this, move onto the next thing, knowing it’s gonna be bigger and better.
“Problem is we don’t really stop doing that, humans are always pushing on, wishing for more, even when what we have is all our teenage selves could have dreamt of. We lose so much of the moment by living in an anxiousness of the future. Tomorrow Nostalgia taps into moments of pure presence, the potency of youth and the endless possibilities of a moment. Driving round the backarse roads on a learners license, the rush of an upcoming friday night in the clubhouse, feeling invincible.
“Going back to specific memories of that time, we wanted the music video to have these almost intoxicating moments of nostalgia. That’s when director & Claire’s childhood best friend Eilís Doherty asked us to go to our respective homes around Co. Carlow and Donegal and film places that flood back teenage memories for us. The courtyard shopping centre, the market square, the fields opposite our bedroom window, the cows from the farm, the back of the town park where people used to shift. Eilís wanted the styling to be based off our school uniforms, glorious browns & yellows and greys & maroons, complete with convent uniform specials like miraculous medals & the treble clef broaches of the class prefect’s school jumper (immaculately achieved by Megan McGuigan).”
Shakalak
Changes
Dublin poetician rock band Shakalak address the inequality of living in Ireland in the 21st century, a song frontman John Cummins says “ is about the daily struggle of working to make a living, and living to make your society work, and ultimately finding strength in those around you – “the quality of community relies on people looking after each other, especially through big struggles.”
Rua Rí
Easy On The Eye
Rua Rí’s debut album Tell Your Mother I Saved Your Life on Soft Boy Records is one of the Irish folk albums of the year – we ran a track-by-track with him about it. ‘Easy On The Eye’ is the second song on the record, a bright and demonstrably beautiful understaetd piece of songwriting.
Zaska, JarJarJnr
Play The Game
Producer and multi-instrumentalist Zaska pairs with Cork rapper JarJarJnr once more for a jazz-rap smooth groove that we actually featured here before in a live context. The pair also teamed up on ‘The Papez’.
Zaska is a serial collaborator – most recently with Melina Malone on ‘Ever Cross My Mind’.
All three songs feature on the upcoming Zaska album Nectar on June 5th.
Kayleigh Noble, Solocoan
Come and See
Kayleigh Noble has shared ‘Come And See’, the opening statement of her new BBKAY EP and the most fully realised thing she’s released yet. Inspired by nights in queer spaces, informed by Arca, Shygirl and Charli XCX – whose Boiler Room set in Ibiza she attened is cited as a turning point – it captures identity, nightlife and sound colliding in real time. Noble on where she’s at: “feminine, fierce and fully myself.”
The shift toward the dancefloor has been happening slowly and steadily. Collaborations with Solocoan, Kule and Black Traffic opened new sonic doors. BBKAY is what’s on the other side – bolder, louder, hyperpop and electronic music folded into pop without apology.
Kayleigh Noble plays the Sound House on June 11th, the EP drops a day after.
Shark School
Don’t Trust A Man
Galway heavy alt-rock trio Shark School go in heavy. ‘Don’t Trust A Man’ brings metal power chords, abrasive industrial sounds and lyrics “lamenting the desperation for women to comfortably just be; to just exist free of the burden and disappointment of living within a gendered social hierarchy.”
Their debut album Selachimorpha is out on June 26th.
Theatre
You Are
Limerick five-piece buzz band THEATRE’s debut single ‘The Fall’ gets its followup here with ‘You Are’, the second track from their forthcoming debut EP Incarnate.
Maeve O’Shea’s vocal is a big hook here – a wailing intensity that earns every comparison to the Cranberries’ heavier moments, from the same Limerick lineage.
“You Are” explores visual imagery attached to my childhood spent in West Cork. Lyrically, each verse strings random memories together, the kind of memories that pop into your head as you’re walking down the street alone or doing your dishes. As the idea became whole, “You Are” turned into an ode to my childhood self, an anthem that I wish I could have heard when I needed it.
They’ve been touring with Bleech 9:3 across the UK, play Whelan’s Upstairs in Dublin on May 21st and Kasbah in Limerick on May 23rd.
Filmore!, Niall Tarmey
EVERYTHING IS BRAINROTT
Kildare-born artist Filmore! – the project of Dafe Pessu Orugbo – is back with ‘EVERYTHING IS BRAINROTT’, an opening statement of a wider mixed-media project called Brainrott and it does not want you to be comfortable.
The track draws from incel forums, manosphere rhetoric, algorithm-driven misogyny and the specific numbness that comes from too much time in the internet’s worst corners. Sonically it leans into hyperpop abrasion, DnB-inspired breaks and digital noise – repetitive and overstimulating by design, rejecting conventional hooks in favour of something more invasive.
Filmore! on the intent: “The goal wasn’t to make something that sounds good. It’s meant to feel pointless, repetitive and obsessive – like something you can’t escape once it’s in your head. It’s all terrible. It’s all insane. It’s all Brainrott.”
At its core the project is about AI girlfriends, revenge porn, loneliness and control reshaped in an increasingly synthetic world. Not a comfortable brief – and not a comfortable listen. That’s the point.
Filmore! emerged in 2022 via a Dublin Fringe Festival commission that earned him the George Fitzmaurice Award for experimental art, and has been building a distinct space in Irish alternative music through Ireland Music Week and Other Voices appearances since.
The feature from Tarmey adds another voice to what is already a restless piece of production – two people processing the same cultural noise from slightly different angles, which is the right approach for a song about fragmented attention.
For more extensive Irish and new music coverage, check into the Irish section for individual track features…
We are prioritising Youtube / Bandcamp embeds where possible.
Other Playlist additions this week:
- Rónán Ó Snodaigh – Ní Liom Dom
- $ONA BLU€ – Ice and Blues
- Niall Tarmey – VHS
- To The Max – Belters Only (Feat. Reggie)
- HAVVK – Pick Your Poison
- Chósta – You Are Here
- 3rd Degree – BROWN SUGAR
- Lemonade Shoelace – I Want You Around
- Daragh Fleming – THE WELFARE OF FORGOTTEN THINGS
- mokusla – fade
- Becca Colley – Nicely
- RuntheRed – natural disaster
- Rhoshi – Inertianism
- DEA MATRONA – My Own Party
- Caoimhín – Lean Do Mhian
- Olive Hatake – CHROMEBOYS.X
- Sonnee – afters
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005. He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Cara Magazine, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, co-founder of Lumo Club, event curator, Indie Sleaze club promoter, and producer of gigs and monthly listening parties & events in Dublin.
