25 acts worth building your weekend around at Stradbally this Electric Picnic, from the headline-adjacent international names to the Irish acts we have been covering all year.
The stage times and full A-Z are here if you want to plan your weekend.
You don’t need me to tell you to go see the likes of CMAT, Fontaines, The Mary Wallopers, Gurriers, Loyle Carner, The Scratch, Cliffords, Florence Road etc etc.
These are the other less obvious acts I’d make a priority to see down in Stradbally this weekend if I were you with a heavy emphasis on the Irish artists.
Geese
Rankins Wood, Sunday 9pm
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Hi, Captain Obvious here. The Brooklyn band’s Getting Killed was among the best albums of last year, and the live evidence has kept stacking up since most recently at Primavera Sound which is where all my Irish friends saw them. Their From The Basement session polished up seven of those songs with a superior clean mix, and the Tiny Desk set in December did the opposite job just as well.
We talked about their rise on the podcast when people started calling them Gen Z’s first great American rock band. Cameron Winter has since become one of the youngest solo artists to headline Carnegie Hall’s main auditorium, documented on a live album out in October.
Oklou
Rankins Wood, Saturday 7:30pm
The French producer, singer and artist’s music gets called hyperpop, but as I wrote about choke enough, in my albums of 2025, there is something more nebulous and viscose going on than that label suggests.
She has been active this year, from the Turnstile reimagined album alongside Four Tet, Kettama and Elton John, to an RA Exchange at AVA London next month. Her live set in Dublin last year was drew on trance and ambient in a gossamer atmospheric intimacy.
Madra Salach
Rankins Wood, Sunday 5:15pm, plus a DJ set at Guinness’ The Lovely Local on Sunday
The Irish band of the moment, it’s been a surge of career notches since their first single only last September. The Dublin alternative-folk six-piece formed in 2023 by Paul Banks, Adam Cullen and Dara Duffy out of pub gigs on the city’s Northside, later rounded out by Maxime Arnold, Jack Lawlor and more.
Their debut EP It’s a Hell of an Age hit number 3 on the Irish Albums Chart in January, a sold-out UK headline tour followed in March, and they recorded a BBC 6 Music Maida Vale session. They were one of the best things we saw at The Great Escape, and they have Vicar Street and an eight-date Irish tour booked for December. They were also superb at last weekend’s Dublin Fleadh in Smithfield.
If you want a sense of the live set before you go, the live recording of ‘The Man Who Seeks Pleasure’, captured at their sold-out show at The Dome in London, does the job.
JPEGMAFIA
Rankins Wood, Friday 9:30pm
Peggy’s sixth album Experimental Rap was our album of the week when it landed in May, but it was a divisive for his fans as it was well-received. Peggy, as everyone calls him, is one of the most restlessly inventive artists in American rap: he produces everything himself, and has spent a decade making records that sound like nobody else’s – blown out productions with an enormous amount of energy, leading to a set that can turn a festival tent upside down.
Shamrock Showband
Guinness’ The Lovely Local, Saturday
My favourite new band of the last while, and the one I keep pushing on people. I introduced them here as what would happen if Father Ted and CMAT had a baby: the Ireland of showbands, of country and western, of rhinestones and reverb and songs about lorry drivers. Second album Shankill Road Mission was our album of the week in June and made the best albums of that month. Shamrock Showband are completely serious about music that sounds like it was recorded in a marquee in a field in 1987 and also somehow sounds like nothing you’ve heard before.
Morgana
Guinness’ The Lovely Local, Friday
Morgana MacIntyre, co-founder of Saint Sister, has a debut album called The Whole Thing Was Very Very Emotional out on September 25th with the mantra “prepared to party, ready to cry?”, so this is one of the last chances to hear these anthemic-emoting synth pop songs before the record is public property.
It has been a slow build to this point, from 2024’s ‘I’ll Cry When I’m Dead’ with its Ardal O’Hanlon-starring video, through the Party Killer EP and ‘Fix Your Heart For Free’, made with Daithí in Clare and channelling Mary O’Hara and The Roches.
Four Irish dates follow in December.
The Wran
Guinness’ The Lovely Local, Friday (trad session), plus Salty Dog
The second wave of Irish trad-folk is well underway, and The Wran are one of the latest bands to come downstream from the likes of Lankum, The Mary Wallopers et al. We first flagged them via ‘Sullivan’s John’ in our new Irish songs column. There are two chances to catch the Waterford band’s banjo-heavy drone trad in Stradbally.
Bricknasty
Rockshore Stage
The Ballymun punk-jazz band whose music gives D’Angelo-from-Dublin vibes, pulling from Irish trad, soul and jazz horns. Black’s Law was one of last year’s standouts.
This year’s ‘bobinov’ has a lighter touch than most of their previous work, a summer-jam breeze with a swaying rhythm. They have also been out on European dates and Loyle Carner support shows, who is also on the bill.
Babyrat
Rockshore Stage, Salty Dog and Fishtown
Cork City’s finest exponents of what they call bitch-pop, landing somewhere between The Strokes and Olivia Rodrigo with razor-sharp riffs and choruses built for a tent. We covered them at The Great Escape in May, all without having yet released a single.
They came through Ireland Music Week, supported Bell X1 at Live at the Marquee, and are on the Fishtown bill too. Three sets across the weekend, so no excuses.
Cardinals
Rockshore Stage
The Kinsale indie-rock five-piece have done everything right since forming shortly after the pandemic: supporting Fontaines D.C. at Finsbury Park, a US headline run, NewDad’s UK and Irish tour, and a homecoming at the newly reopened Savoy in Cork.
Debut album Masquerade arrived in February on So Young Records, recorded with producer Shrink at RAK Studios, and we flagged ‘The Burning Of Cork’ ahead of it. The Button Factory in November is their biggest headline show to date. Catch these guys if you like retro-leaning rock music and are enthusiastic when REM bring out the accordion.
Deathtoricky
Rockshore Stage
The Celbridge artist is at the vanguard of the younger movement of Irish alt cloud-rappers coming up through the TikTok virality queue.
‘fido’ is arguably his best song yet, with bright percussive production from 1sinister and babycashy and a video shot down at Hanover Quay by Cian Bolger, who also directed his breakthrough Martin Solveig-sampling track ‘motives’. The seven-track spring cleaning was followed in recent weeks by the pre-life EP which features the Turnstile-sampling ‘lemon haze’.
Maicín
Rockshore Stage
Cork folk-trad indie band, pronounced “mah-keen”, recent single ‘Kicking The Habit’ was produced with Oli Deakin, who is of course known for his work with CMAT. In their own words, “imagine the lovechild of Billy Bragg and Jarvis Cocker… now get your head out of the gutter and picture Maicín.”
They are also on this year’s Ireland Music Week bill, which has a decent recent track record of predicting who ends up on a stage like this the following summer.
Skagaboo (Lil Skag and Sugaboo) + Friends
Rockshore Stage
Two of the most interesting names in Irish hip-hop under one banner. The Skagaboo EP is a five-track joint release from Sugaboo and Lil Skag, Kimmage and Enniscorthy together on a set of Owin-produced breezy, culture-referencing rap tunes with guest turns from Curtisy and Beddyminaj.
It made our best albums of March, and the pair’s Forbidden Fruit slot was one of the sets we flagged there. The “+ Friends” part is a bit to be curious about.
Theatre
Rockshore Stage, plus Fishtown
Limerick alt-noise-makers spent a year writing and building their live set largely out of sight while the spotlight was elsewhere. Ethereal rock blending folk and shoegaze, gorgeous melodies, and the kind of band who become the discovery of someone’s festival weekend.
They sold out Third Man’s Basement in London and supported Gurriers across Europe before they had released any recorded music at all. The debut EP finally landed in June, and we featured them in the new Irish songs column around it.
Huartan
Croí
Tradtronica band who sing as Gaeilge, and the current BBC Introducing NI Artist of the Year, picked up at the NI Music Prize in Belfast.
The Croí stage is a natural amphitheatre built around a green stage made from fallen trees (the old Body&Soul stage), which is about as good a setting as electronic trad is going to get.
I Dreamed I Dream
Salty Dog
Self-described Cork sean-nós noise-makers, and one of the more genuinely alternative propositions on the site. ‘Fags’ reminded me in the best way of Fight Like Apes crossed with Irish traditional music.
Second EP BOYOPOISONING followed the superb Why Say A Lot?, and a member has since branched off with the solo project Jean Pack, who is also on the Fishtown bill this weekend.
Rua Rí
Fishtown, An Chollchoill / The Hazelwood
Cobh singer-songwriter Seán Damery released his debut album Tell Your Mother I Saved Your Life on Soft Boy Records in May, produced by Kean Kavanagh and rooted in specific places: Cobh, Cork City, the fields and streets around them.
He did a track-by-track on it for us, opened the SOAK-curated SETS night at the Guinness Storehouse, and has ten Irish dates booked between September and November.
Child of Prague
Guinness’ The Lovely Local, Sunday (trad session), Fishtown and Art Lot
Named after the Irish tradition of sticking a statue of the Baby Jesus in the garden so the wedding gets good weather. I introduced them as an Irish take on midwest emo, bringing trad, chamber pop and math rock into the mix, a little like Black Country, New Road with more introspective, vulnerable influences.
They are on the Artlot bill as well as the trad session, and violist and vocalist Amelia Durac appeared in the Art to Art series in conversation with Gurriers’ Dan Hoff.
Beddyminaj
Glow Depot, Main Stage (Catacombs afternoon takeover)
A fixture of the Dublin underground rap scene, alongside DeathtoRicky, and a guest on Skagaboo. The Catacombs collective curate an afternoon set at Glow Depot featuring Beddyminaj alongside Omen, Survival, Ruka, Nos, Jugo Yyung, Babyfacee and Desires.
If you have been following the Sound House Catacomb nights in Dublin this past year, this is that scene transplanted to Stradbally for an afternoon. Go early.
And He, The Fool
Guinness’ The Lovely Local, Saturday (trad session), Art Lot
The Dublin seven-piece band’s ‘Little Women’ is a confounding, singular melting pot of a song, and the sort of thing that only really makes sense once you have seen the whole band do it in a room, inspired by CMAT and Carly Simon.
The seven members of And, He The Fool, are based between Dublin and London, drawing from Dublin, Meath, Westmeath, Wicklow and Donegal. They are doing a trad session at the Lovely Local on your Saturday afternoon, and they play Artlot too.
Avenue 68
Glow Depot
The Dublin indie band impressed us with ‘Gifted Wine’, a head-nodding kaleidoscope of a tune with jazz in its bones.
They feature at Glow Depot, which runs its daytime lineup of emerging and established acts before turning into a late-night club space.
Brooki
Rockshore Stage
The Dublin four-piece Brooki blend raw emotion with atmospheric guitar lines and a cinematic quality that suggests a band who have been listening to a lot of the right things. We covered them at The Great Escape,
Here is the appeal: a strong word-of-mouth live reputation and they are yet another Irish band who are keeping their cards close to their chest in terms of recorded singles.. You cannot stream your way into knowing what this sounds like. Got to see them live.
Cruel Sister
Rockshore Stage
Faith Nico writes, produces and mixes everything herself, and has been doing low-fi shoegaze-leaning rock with nods to Wolf Alice and Sister-era Sonic Youth since the girls my age EP.
‘XOXO’ is fuzzed-out 90s grunge and shoegaze, drawing on early PJ Harvey, My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth, and written about the pressures female musicians face to conform to unrealistic beauty and behaviour standards.
Kayleigh Noble
Guinness’ The Lovely Local, Sunday
The Dublin pop artist with the R&B sway has been on our radar a long time, from her work with Cork producer 1000 Beasts through ‘Ride On My Own’ and the debut album Just a Girl.
‘Come And See’, with Solocoan, opens her BBKAY EP and is the most fully realised thing she has released, inspired by nights in queer spaces and informed by Arca. A Sunday afternoon in the Lovely Local tent is an unexpected home for it, which is part of the fun.
F3MIII
Rockshore Stage
The Irish electronic producer and vocalist, pronounced Femi, has been on a roll for a while now, dropping polychromatic electronic pop bangers like ‘Say My Name’, ‘LostWithoutMaria’ and ‘Bad 4 My Health’ before his track ‘Noble’ went worldwide and broke into the US Billboard charts.
He picked ten tracks he loved for us ahead of his first Other Voices, where he cited Bricknasty’s set as his favourite of the series. He has since guested on Bricknasty’s ‘I Hope You’re Ready’, and both of them are on the Rockshore bill this weekend.
Full stage times, stage breakdown and the A-Z of every act playing are here.
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.
