Ireland’s traditional music scene has never been more alive — and it has never had more passionate voices helping to share it with the world. From the smoky back rooms of Dublin pubs to concert halls in New York and Tokyo, a new generation of Irish musicians and session documentarians are carrying forward a tradition that stretches back centuries, while finding bold new ways to make it resonate with modern audiences.
Whether you discovered trad music on a rain-soaked evening in a Galway bar, through a late-night session in Clare, or simply by stumbling across a mesmerising YouTube video at 2am, you already know how powerfully this music moves people. The artists and creators featured here are the reason that feeling keeps spreading. They are the storytellers, instrumentalists, and voices keeping Ireland’s most precious living tradition exactly that — living.
Ye Vagabonds — The Brothers Who Made Folk Feel Like Home
Listen & more: yevagabonds.com (official site)
Brothers Diarmuid and Brían Mac Gloinn, known collectively as Ye Vagabonds, grew up in rural County Carlow before moving to Dublin in 2012 to immerse themselves in the city’s thriving folk and trad scene. Since then, they have established themselves as one of the most distinctive and celebrated voices in Irish folk music, drawing on sean-nós singing traditions, English and American old-time influences, and the broader European folk revival to create something that feels both timeless and utterly of the moment.
Their 2019 album The Hare’s Lament earned them three RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards that year, including Best Track, Best Album, and Best Folk Group — a remarkable sweep that confirmed what audiences had been saying for years: these brothers are something special. Signed to River Lea, an offshoot of Rough Trade Records, they have toured extensively across Ireland, the UK, and North America, bringing their close-harmony folk to audiences who may never have heard a sean-nós melody before — and leaving them transfixed.
Follow Ye Vagabonds on Instagram and YouTube to hear their sessions, live performances, and new recordings. Their music is the perfect gateway into the broader world of Irish traditional song.
Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh — The Fiddler Who Plays a Tenth String
Listen & more: caoimhinoraghallaigh.com (official site)
When Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh steps onto a stage, something ancient and strange fills the room. A Dublin-born fiddle player who studied Theoretical Physics at Trinity College before finding his true calling in traditional music, Ó Raghallaigh is one of the most innovative instrumentalists working in the Irish trad world today. He plays a 10-string instrument called the hardanger d’amore — a fusion of the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle and the viola d’amore — producing a drone-rich sound that draws deeply on the uilleann pipes tradition and the music of Sliabh Luachra.
Having spent years working at the Irish Traditional Music Archives in Dublin, absorbing centuries of old recordings, Ó Raghallaigh brings a scholar’s depth to his playing alongside a musician’s soul. He is a member of acclaimed supergroup The Gloaming, whose 2014 self-titled debut won the Meteor Choice Music Prize for Irish Album of the Year, and he records and performs internationally as a solo artist and in duo collaborations with musicians such as Mick O’Brien and American musician Dan Trueman.
His work is a reminder that traditional music is not a static thing — it breathes, it adapts, it absorbs new influences while keeping its roots firmly in the Irish earth. RTÉ’s arts series The Works Presents has featured him demonstrating how his extraordinary instrument works, and that short video alone is worth your next half hour. Find his YouTube channel and let it take you somewhere you didn’t know you needed to go. You might also enjoy our piece on why it takes 21 years to master Ireland’s most mysterious instrument — it puts the depth of commitment that musicians like Ó Raghallaigh bring into beautiful context.
Lankum — Dublin’s Most Thrilling Folk Experimenters
Listen & more: lankumdublin.com (official site)
If you think Irish traditional music is gentle and predictable, Lankum would like a word. The Dublin quartet — Ian Lynch, Daragh Lynch, Cormac MacDiarmada, and Radie Peat — take the songs and structures of Irish folk tradition and push them somewhere altogether more intense: layered drones, psychedelic textures, four-part harmonies that rise and fall like Atlantic swells, and arrangements that can feel like standing at the edge of the world in a fierce westerly wind.
Their 2023 album False Lankum was nominated for the Ivor Novello Award for Best Album in 2024 and won the RTÉ Choice Music Prize Irish Album of the Year — cementing their status as one of the most important acts working in Irish music today. The live album Live in Dublin, recorded across three sold-out nights at Vicar Street, captures the sheer electricity of their performances for those who haven’t yet had the chance to see them in person.
Lankum demonstrate that the greatest act of respect for a tradition is to genuinely engage with it — to ask hard questions of it, to stretch it, and to trust it enough to take real risks. Active on Facebook and YouTube, they are well worth following if you want to see where Irish folk music is heading next. For those curious about the roots of what Lankum are building on, our article on the wandering teachers who kept Ireland’s feet moving for centuries offers a fascinating glimpse into the heritage behind the tradition.
Daoirí Farrell — The Singing Bard of Dublin’s Trad Clubs
Listen & more: daoiri.com (official site)
Daoirí Farrell (pronounced ‘Derry’) is a Dublin singer and Irish bouzouki player who has been described by some of the biggest names in Irish folk as one of the most important vocalists to emerge from Ireland in a generation. A product of Dublin’s celebrated An Góilin Traditional Singers club, Farrell carries the deep song tradition of Ireland with an authenticity and emotional directness that is rare and genuinely moving.
His credentials speak for themselves: 2013 All Ireland Champion Singer, multiple RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Award and BBC Radio 2 Folk Award nominations, and an enthusiastically growing international audience drawn in equal measure by his unadorned voice and his gift for selecting songs that carry real emotional weight. His 2023 album The Wedding Above in Glencree was warmly received, and his 2024 touring schedule took him across Ireland, the UK, the USA, and Australia — a measure of how far his reputation now reaches.
Farrell is also a generous presence on social media, hosting Sunday live concerts on Facebook and maintaining an active YouTube channel with over 41,000 subscribers. He is the kind of musician who makes you feel the song has been sung specifically for you — and who makes you grateful that the great tradition of Irish vocal music is in such sure, committed hands.
A Community of Sound
Do you know an Irish traditional musician, session organiser, or trad music documentarian we should spotlight next? Leave a name in the comments below — we love hearing from readers who have discovered someone extraordinary in a local session or tucked away on YouTube. The Love Ireland community is one of the best places in the world to share these discoveries, and every recommendation helps more people find the music that Ireland has been quietly perfecting for centuries.
You might also enjoy our guide to the best things to do in Galway, where the trad session tradition is part of everyday life, or our piece on why the harp on your Guinness faces a different direction than your passport — a small piece of musical history hiding in plain sight.
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Ireland’s trad music tradition has survived wars, famines, and centuries of change because it has always found new voices willing to carry it forward. The artists above are proof that this generation is more than equal to that responsibility. Listen to them, follow them, share their work — and let the music do what it has always done best: bring people together around something that genuinely matters.
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