• Watch: Bouts – Allies

    January 26, 2016 - By 

    It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Dublin’s wanderlust-ridden Bouts. Five months on from the release of its lead single ‘Missteps’, the indie rock quartet have reappeared with their forthcoming debut EP’s emphatic follow-up, ‘Allies’. Featuring a brilliantly bizarre video courtesy of Eoin Heaney of Highly Stimulating Productions, the track is classic Bouts through-and-through, marrying urgent, starry-eyed melodies with noise-laced zeal. Bouts’ Unlearn EP will be released on February 29. Check out the artwork for the EP and watch the video for ‘Allies’ below.

  • Watch: Orchid Collective – The Power of Love

    December 23, 2015 - By 

    Having had a very encouraging 2015, Dublin alt-folk four-piece Orchid Collective found some time when recording their forthcoming next single at Lisburn’s Millbank Studios last week to re-imagine and cover Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Christmas classic ‘The Power of Love’. A wonderfully paced, subtly spellbinding rendition of the 1984 original, their rendition is accompanied by a video by filmmaker Tiaran Larkin. Check it out below.

  • Watch: Daithí – Mary Keane’s Introduction

    December 9, 2015 - By 

    Shot and directed by Conal Thomson, the video for ‘Mary Keane’s Introduction’ by Daithí is a wonderfully evocative accompaniment to a track featuring the Galway experimental electronic maestro’s 90 year old grandmother reminiscing about romance in her youth in the West coast of Ireland. Back in October, we said the said the single track “fused distinct worlds – that of the old and that of the new – to spawn something so innately joyous that you would struggle to find it anything but wonderfully accomplished.” With Thomson’s video it takes on an even greater sense of resonant context. In a Facebook post today, Daithí said: “Dotted along…

  • Watch: The Shaker Hymn – Sucking It Out

    December 8, 2015 - By 

    Having supported Gaz Coombes at Cyprus Avenue on Saturday night – an apt local/international pairing if there ever was one – Cork four-piece The Shaker Hymn look back on a two month U.S. road trip as the spur for their de facto formation in 2012 having made “rudimentary teenage noises” since 2005. To say the least, the imprint of this rather curious, drawn-out gestation period shines through on the band’s new single, ‘Sucking It Out’. Revealing a band who seem to know each other’s musical anatomy inside out, it’s a perfectly discriminating release, tipping its hat to the likes of QOTSA’s more undemanding, subtly swaggering…

  • Watch: i am niamh – Creep

    December 7, 2015 - By 

    Evoking the likes of Julia Holter and Kate Bush, Dublin singer-songwriter Niamh Parkinson AKA i am niamh has unveiled the video for her sublime new single, ‘Creep’. Showing how far a simple set-up can be stretched to great effect, the video – directed by Aidan Duffy – features the fast-rising, classically-trained Parkinson in positively phantasmal form. Check out the video and i am niamh’s debut album Wonderland below.

  • Watch: Robocobra Quartet – Witch Hunt (Live)

    November 30, 2015 - By 

    From the release of their BOMBEP EP back in April, unveiling double-single Iwazaru/Mizaru in October and several memorable shows in Belfast and further afield, it’s safe to say 2015 has been something of a breakthrough year for Robocobra Quartet. A quick scan through our copious posts on the Chris Ryan-fronted band – before and after featuring them as one of our 15 For ’15 – reveals that we’ve called them: chamber punk, jazz-inflected rap-punk, rapjazz-punk, jazz-rap-punk, jazz-punk and (our current personal favourite) “four-piece”. At this juncture, then, it’s say to safe we’ve reached a descriptor Endgame when it comes to even flirting with the idea of summing up…

  • Watch: Good Friend – The Return of Fionn & The Fianna

    November 25, 2015 - By 

    Currently based in Newcastle, North Coast alt-punk three-piece Good Friend have grown in leaps and bounds over the last couple of years. Having spent 2015 recording their forthcoming debut album, Ride The Storm, the Adam Carroll-fronted band have just re-emerged with ‘The Return of Fionn & The Fianna’, an equally urgent and anthemic new track that features on compilation Paper + Plastick; Welcome to the UK. Re-adapting stories from Irish Mythology to a contemporary context, it’s a strong and purposeful cut hinting at promising things for Ride The Storm. Check out the video for the track below.

  • Watch: Sea Pinks – Depth of Field

    November 24, 2015 - By 

    First shared last month – just over a year on from the release of the stellar Dreaming Tracks – we reckoned ‘Depth of Field’ by Belfast three-piece Sea Pinks was “yet another masterfully sanguine slice of melancholia from the Neil Brogan-fronted band, relating ambivalence and doubt in ways they mastered many moons ago.” Now the track – one of our favourite Sea Pinks’ tracks to date – has a video, which you can check out below. Sea Pinks’ new album, Soft Days, will be released via CF Records on January 8.

  • Watch: Candice Gordon – Smoke in the Air

    November 10, 2015 - By 

    With vocals evoking the likes of Anna Calvi and Grace Slick to Nico and PJ Harvey, Berlin-based Dublin artist Candice Gordon fuses garage, psych and rock with classical and jazz influences in an irresistible brume of quasi-Gothic space. Set for release via Proper Octopus Records on Friday, November 13, her new single ‘Smoke In The Air’ personifies that elemental majesty in a haze of repetitive, mantric glory. Creative by Gordon with cameras courtesy of No Name Media & Valquire Veljkovic, watch the video for the single below.  

  • Watch: Colm Mac Con Iomaire – Bláth (Flower)

    November 4, 2015 - By 

    Just over a month until his homecoming Christmas show with Lisa O’Neill at Dublin’s Vicar Street on December 17,  Colm Mac Con Iomaire has unveiled a video of him performing the brilliant ‘Bláth (Flower)’ live at Rockwood Music Hall, New York City. Filmed and edited by Shane G. Mahon, it’s a wonderfully captured performance that sees guitar, strings and piano weave a bewitching backdrop upon which footage of NYC on mute is overlaid. Frames’ member Mac Con Iomaire will play the following upcoming shows. November 11: St Pancras Old Church, London December 9: Empire Music Hall, Belfast December 17: Vicar St, Dublin