‘We’ve got to release the dead hand of the past’: how Ireland created the world’s best alternative music scene

Irish indie acts used to be ignored, even on Irish radio. But songs confronting the Troubles, poverty and oppression are now going global – and changing how Ireland sees itself

On a hot Saturday afternoon at Glastonbury, while many are nursing halfway-point hangovers, the Dublin garage punk quartet Sprints whip up a jubilant mosh pit with their charged tune Descartes, Irish tricolour flags bobbing above them. As summer speeds on, at Japan’s Fuji rock festival, new songs from Galway indie act NewDad enrapture the crowd. Travy, a Nigerian-born and Tallaght-raised rapper, crafts a mixtape inflected with his Dublin lilt, the follow-up to the first Irish rap album to top the Irish charts. Efé transcends Dublin bedroom pop to get signed by US label Fader, and on Later … With Jools Holland, George Houston performs the haunting Lilith – a tribute to political protest singers everywhere – in a distinctive Donegal accent.

From Melbourne to Mexico City, concertgoers continue to scream to that opening loop on strings of Fontaines DC’s Starburster, and CMAT’s viral “woke macarena” dance to her hit single Take a Sexy Picture of Me plays out in festival pits and on TikTok. You might have heard about Kneecap, too.