The 50 best Irish songs of 2025

50.

Ahmed, With Love., Kibo, Lil Skag

Bedroom Bullies

Ahmed, With Love.’s second EP of collaborations Ahmed, With Friends! Vol.2 followed up his 2024 Comma, FullStop. mixtape album.

It continues Ahmed’s gift for dropping bright and breezy sampling rap tunes, which he calls “Sillywave”.

The EP was made along with London-based artists including Owin, Pozer and David Armada.

49.

$ona Blu€

Ice And Blues

The Irish Sri-Lankan artist $ONA BLU€ is making some of the most interesting emerging music in Ireland right now, and following on from recent features for tracks ‘Good 4 You’ and the Gaviibaby-assisted ‘Pious’.

‘Ice And Blues’ reminds me Martina Topley-Bird especially in $ONA’s bluesy soul-filled voice. The song was produced by GNS, and was inspired by the Jordan Peele film Get Out.

48.

Bog Band

Apryl Fools

Bog Band are the London-based Irish duo of Stephen Sorensen and Isaac Clarke, old childhood friends making soft rock soul and pop music of the 80s – The Style Council, Prefab Sprout and The Blue Nile.

‘Apryl Fools’ recalls Steely Dan and yacht rock with its breezy melodies and sounds.

47.

I Dreamed I Dream

Fags

‘Fags’ from Cork “sean-nós noise-makers” I Dreamed I Dream’s BOYOPOISONING EP reminds me in a great way of the Irish synth-pop legends Fight Like Apes crossed with Irish traditional music.

46.

LIL ****, Alex Gough, Lil Skag

BEBO BBY

Alex Gough, Lil Skag and lil beep feature on a bass-rumbling slapper from !important Audio’s recently revived issue series.

!important audio are a collective who usually release new music on the first Friday of every second month.

Beloved of his fellow rappers and ourselves, Lil Skag was everywhere this year, and Alex Gough released the intriguing Painful album this year.

45.

headfooters

feral

Fizzy Dublin hyperpop music? ‘feral’ is the big neon boom of a debut single from Dublin electronic duo headfooters, who is producer Eric Fitzgerald (qwasi, Bad Soup Records, DDR), with the vocals and lyrics written by Sadhbh Fitzgerald (DHBH).

The pair previously worked together on Bad Soup Records but wanted to explore their mutual love of trashy and experimental music.

The name headfooters means ‘a simplistic representation of a human-like figure without a torso and sometimes various limbs, usually drawn by a child’.

44.

KhakiKid, Saint Demarcus

Date Nite

Khakikid has been dropping some big energy tunes for a while now, but the Moanbag EP offers the most compelling argument yet for this Dublin lad’s status to be much elevated.

‘Date Nite’ is a breezy banger of a tune that combined with its easy fun video went viral on socials, that sometimes that happens not for gimmick reasons but because the tune is great – and ‘Date Nite’ is one of those resonant earworms that puts Motown soul, indie-funk R&B, guitar and poppy rap into a bright and fizzy mix.

43.

Travy

EUROSTAR (with Reggie, Yvnnis)

Travy fka Travis took charge in his solo guise on the new mixtape Spooky released in January, which is full of world-building drill music that reaches for the atmospheric cinematic of Travis Scott’s Astroworld.

Producer Liam Harris is at the helm once more as on Doghouse, and ‘Eurostar’ is a continental straddling rap track that features Gliders cohort Reggie and Parisian rapper Yvnnis

42.

Rún

Your Death My Body

Rún are a newly arrived heavy band featuring Tara Baoth Mooney, Rían Trench and Diarmuid MacDiarmada, and ‘Your Death My Body’ is a heavy caustic track from the band’s self-titled debut album, that sounds like Portishead jamming with a hooded band in a stone circle.

41.

Moving Still

Bang of Luban

The Irish Arabic producer Moving Still dropped an new EP on the Bordello A Paragi label that continues his unique forays into melding modern electronic dynamics with Arabic dance music mixing Dabke with Italo.

40.

Joshua Burnside

Marching Round the Ladies

A beaut from Joshua Burnside’s excellent Teeth On Time that is a take on an old traditional children’s folk song.

This song was inspired by an old Belfast folk song that I discovered in the in the songbook ‘Belfast, city of song’. I’ve changed the melody and added a few extra verses, one line in particular regarding the Tories has been particularly fun to sing over the past year or so!

39.

Vaticanjail

Kahlua Kiss

The Chilean Dublin-based artist Vaticanjail is doing really interesting things with various sensibilities drawn from her heritage, electronic production, reggaeton, and more.

‘Kahlua Kiss’ is an effervescent gliding track from the nine-track Sweets Bar EP.

38.

NewDad

Entertainer

Galway indie-rock band NewDad return with assured and confident followup to their debut album Madra. ‘Entertainer’ is razor-sharp indie pop gem about “entertaining other people’s idea of who you should be.”

Altar addresses themes of relationships, homesickness, ambition and sacrifice “and finds the trio grappling with the life they left behind in exchange for the promise of chasing their dreams”. Altar was written over the last two years after leaving Galway for London.

37.

Thumper

Bad Mood

Dublin double-drumming rockers Thumper dropped this earworm of a guitar tune at the end of September, and it’s one of their best yet.

Says frontman Oisin Furlong Leahy:
I once worshiped the sun, now I take my cues from a screen. My phone alarm wakes me, and I’m being sold something within seconds. Am I a relic of the past or a victim of the present? Bad Mood weighs the human experience against the black mirror in my pocket. Boiling the mental health conversation down to a glib soundbite. “I’m so sorry but you’ve caught me in a bad mood”