• Video Premiere: Skinner – Beer Me, Jim

    June 4, 2021 - By 

    Dublin musician and producer Aaron Corcoran aka Skinner has swiftly carved out a niche for himself in the Irish indie scene. Today, he underscores that promise with Gunge, a five-track EP melding slouching punk with a lo-fi jazz bent. A highlight is closer ‘Beer Me, Jim’. Written from the “perspective of a young Irish person in lieu of finding a path in a country facing high rents, growing social inequality and a future that is worse off than the generations that have come before,” it’s a sax-laced and decidedly earworming effort from the 23-year-old. Zoning in on the escapist ritualism…

  • Video Premiere: Pretty Happy – Sea Sea Sea

    April 22, 2021 - By 

    Just a couple of months on from their hugely successful ‘Salami’, Cork art-punk trio Pretty Happy are back with the video for new single ‘Sea Sea Sea’. While the dischordant rattles of NYC no-wave-inspired guitar drive things song along, tension is cranked between shrieked vocals of bassist Arann Blake – recalling Black Francis and David Byrne at their most effervescent – and a spoken word passage from guitarist/vocalist Abbey Blake. Positively owning its Irishness, ‘Sea Sea Sea’ is an at-times dadaist exploration of the nation’s chronic self-loathing and perpetual issues of queer identity and gender stereotyping. Its video – debuted in November’s Spilt Milk Festival – was…

  • Premiere: Strange Boy – Waiting

    April 14, 2021 - By 

    A self-proclaimed “1000-year-old poet channelling through the body of a young man from Limerick,” Strange Boy (FKA Jonen Dekay) is well and truly a rapper on a mission. Having paired up with Rusangano Family and Naive Ted on his acclaimed 2016 mixtape, Passionate Example, he has since signed with Berlin-based label Welcome To The New World and collaborated with PX Music, as well as Hazey Haze, Citrus Fresh, GavinDaVinci, among others. It’s a forward-moving trajectory that’s been racing head long in one direction: the release of his debut album, HOLY / UNHOLY, in the summer. Working alongside producer Enda Gallery, it’s certain to lay bare Strange Boy’s singular nuance…

  • Video Premiere: Invaderband – I Won’t Remember You

    March 23, 2021 - By 

    One of the most idiosyncratic garage/art-rock propositions anywhere on the island, Invaderband is the music-making moniker of Derry-based Mancunian Adam Leonard. Backed by the likes of fellow Derry artist Chris McConaghy aka Our Krypton Son on guitar, he’s been responsible for some irrestisible punk-pop gems over the last few years. Clocking in at just over two minutes, new single ‘I Won’t Remember You’ is a textbook case in point. The lead single from the band’s second LP, Peter Gabriel, it’s a breakneck burst of garage-pop evoking late-70s English punk immediacy à la Buzzcocks and Wire. Speaking about the track, Leonard said, “It’s not about…

  • Video Premiere: Pretty Happy – Salami

    February 11, 2021 - By 

    We last heard from Cork art-punk threesome Pretty Happy early last year with the release of their single ‘Shmuck’. It was a scintillating four-minute effort from a band promising much more of the same. Fast forward a few months and the band’s new single, ‘Salami’, is the sound of a band very much delivering on that promise. A sub-three minute blitz of full-blown, face-melting Pixies worship, it’s accompanied by a video that extols the virtues (or, if you’re a vegan, iniquities) of the food product in question. Have a first look below.

  • Watch: Pixie Cut Rhythm Orchestra – I didn’t love you when I said I did and I don’t now

    February 14, 2021 - By 

    On this, a day of unilateral disappointment and self-loathing, we’re delighted to share some reprieve in the form of a new single from one of the most exciting guitar bands to pop up on our radars in the last year, Dublin trio Pixie Cut Rhythm Orchestra. ‘I didn’t love you when I said I did’ more than delivers on the promise of their prior two singles, as the band increasingly look to be held in the same breath with the likes of the fast-rising Pillow Queens and Maija Sofia. Recorded & mixed by Sean Montgomery Dietz at Annesley House, its understated wooziness is enveloped in a maelstrom of crushingly…

  • Video Premiere: Arthuritis – My Ass, Around The World

    January 27, 2021 - By 

    Cork’s answer to Sun Araw, R Stevie Moore and Ween all at once, Arthuritis straddles the brow of art at its most extreme ends. Perhaps the finest example yet of this is his latest single, the electronic wonk-pop of the rather literal ‘My Ass, Around The World’, self-produced on a four track. “I’ve been really enjoying working with tape”, he tells us. “Once it’s recorded, that’s it. If you make a mistake, it either stays in the song or I record that all over again, I love how confining it is. The ability to endlessly twiddle on a computer sort of takes some of the fun…

  • Video Premiere: Any Joy – Sun

    February 1, 2021 - By 

    The Sun EP, which may have slipped you by at the end of last year, saw Any Joy chip further away at their singular heady brew of psychedelia, internalised doom and post-punk to follow up on their wonderful 2017 debut album, Cycles. The band have shared with us their Adam Curtis fever dream of a video for its title track, created by frontman Oisin Dineen. He tells us “Climate disaster and human displacement are the happy subject matter of Sun. The video paints a colourful, post apocalyptic landscape, running down the clock.” Check it out:

  • Video Premiere: Field Trip – Weatherman

    November 27, 2020 - By 

    We’re pleased to present a first look at the video for ‘Weatherman’ by Galway garage-pop band Field Trip. Heartfelt and subtly earworming in all the right places, the single – which is about “drifting apart from friends despite one’s best intentions – was recorded in a primary school at the end of 2019 alongside other tracks that the band will be releasing over the next while. And the video is something special. The band said: “It features clips from a 90s documentary entitled Clear The Streets, a feature on homeless people in Galway. It is co-directed by local legend Mark Kennedy who has since passed…

  • Video Premiere: Ana Gog – Breaking The Atom

    November 26, 2020 - By 

    Dublin-based atmospheric alt. folk quintet Ana Gog are back with their first new music in three years with the video for ‘Breaking The Atom’. Ornately arranged with glistening textures, the song was produced at Arad Studios. Its intricately woven Abbey Road-esque – and we don’t say that lightly – outro harmonies are amongst the finest compositional moments they’ve achieved thus far. Ana Gog tell us more: “‘Breaking the Atom’ was written shortly after coming home from a long tour across Europe in our beloved, soon-to-be stolen van, Morris. In the midst of all the sleepless nights (mostly for ‘good’ reasons!), logistical nightmares and petty fights that accompany touring,…