Dork’s Hype List is our annual spotlight on the artists who’ve started to really stand out – not because they’re destined for instant superstardom, but because there’s something in what they’re doing that feels fresh, deliberate and worth keeping close tabs on.
When Finn Keogh was 10 years old, he began to understand the power of music. His dad’s Irish folk show toured the UK constantly, playing seven nights a week in pubs and venues where character and community mattered more than anything else. Some nights were rough, but those were often the ones where Finn saw the magic most clearly.
What stuck with him wasn’t the travelling or the shows themselves – it was how music transformed a room the same way every night, no matter the town or the people in it.
“I just remember going to all of those gigs and watching him play to people who had never met him and didn’t know who he was. Yet it was such a universal language. His show would just bring out this wholesome, happy, appreciative spirit in everybody,” Finn recalls. “I’ve seen people get out of their seats to go and fight him, but by the time they get to him, they’re laughing! It’s such a weird fucking phenomenon, isn’t it? Music’s so intangible.”
That feeling has guided Finn ever since. It’s why, as 2026 edges into view, he’s experienced the sort of runaway 12 months every person starting a band dreams of: a rapid, undeniable rise that’s pushed Keo into the centre of the conversation. They’ve become the band people are watching, championing, and placing their hopes on; something that captures a moment and means more.
An hour after tickets go on sale for Keo’s next massive headline tour, Finn is still processing it all: the dream come true, and the dream still unfolding. This is Keo in the heart of a moment.
“This is everything I’ve ever wanted,” he reflects. After years of relentless gigging and grinding, Keo’s breakthrough finally feels real. “I definitely have thought a lot about my previous self and how I would have interpreted this all. We were on the way back from Dublin very recently, and I think our tour manager said, ‘What would you class as making it? When would you feel like that?’ And it’s weird because, in my head, making it would be headlining Alexandra Palace in London. That’s when it would click in my head. But our videographer, Hermione, was like, ‘I think you’ve made it’.
“It all kinda dawned on me how, when I was younger and when I first came to London, I would see all my favourite bands and in my head they were all fucking rock stars. I don’t see us being anywhere near the level of those bands, yet what’s happened to us, and what’s coming up – those stages are bigger than any I saw those bands on. I’m definitely aware that we’ve surpassed something noteworthy, you know?”
“This is everything I’ve ever wanted”
Reality interrupts as builders drill furiously next door (“Oh god, sorry about that”), and Finn’s morning wake-up after a solid few months of touring is kicking in. A morning coffee is needed urgently; it’s been that kind of year.
Keo’s first UK headline tour sold out in minutes. Every night has been an eruption of sing-alongs and emotional release that lingers long after the final note is struck. Their summer was spent ricocheting between festivals at home and abroad, their name spreading in the way bands only dream of: friend to friend, group chat to group chat.
“There are people following us around on tour,” he exclaims. “They’re coming to every show! People getting tattoos and lads coming up to me in tears explaining how much something we’ve done means to them. It can be quite a lot to take in, but it’s such a beautiful thing.”
It’s that connection that makes Keo’s rise more than just a fizzing rush of something fresh. Across their debut EP ‘Siren’, Keo laid out the blueprint for what they could become, and the world responded by falling straight into their arms. Whether it’s the up-close and personal hurt written across tangled emotions in ‘I Lied, Amber’ or the emphatic forgiveness found in ‘Stolen Cars’, these are tracks that have come scratching and clawing into the world because they have to: raw, vulnerable, and unwilling to pretend they’re anything other than the truth.
“The thing that can be very hard when you first start making music is envisioning how it’s all going to happen for you,” Finn explains. “Every single day over the past four years, I’ve just had to keep saying to myself that it’ll happen, but I’ve not been able to envision it. Now it’s reaching a point where we can. I’m not going to sit and think about how to do this; I’m just going to fucking do it.”
“It can be quite a lot to take in, but it’s such a beautiful thing”
From the moment he watched his dad play those early gigs, Finn was hooked. School didn’t suit him, and it was a bargain struck with his father that set everything else in motion.
“I just got to the point where I think I said to my Dad, if I pick up this guitar and learn a song today, will you let me have the day off school?” he laughs. “It’s a true story! I think I learned a song by The Lumineers…”
‘Ho Hey’ was the one — learned quickly because his mum liked it — and before the day was done, he’d written his first songs using those three brand-new chords. “I’ll admit it might not be the coolest first song to have learnt; I wish I could say it was ‘All Apologies’ by Nirvana or something.”
Music was constant even as he moved across towns, cities and countries. Secondary school left him feeling like he fit nowhere. “Not quite in with the indie kids, and I wasn’t quite in with anything opposite that either,” he says.
Instead, he spent every lunch writing, thinking, building his world. “They had this thing where you could book out little music rooms, and it’s quite sad to say, but I would book a music room every lunch rather than socialise with anybody.”
His songwriting developed, nurtured by the artists he connected with. Ben Howard became a revelation. “I remember when ‘I Forget Where We Were’ by Ben Howard came out, and I heard ‘End of the Affair’ and it’s just this fucking dark, amazingly written song about his wife having an affair. I remember thinking, that’s so heavy. He’s just sharing this with absolutely everybody, and some of the lyrics really are a bit uncomfortable to listen to at times. But I really like that.”
That emotional openness runs deep in Keo’s work. ‘Thorn’, now a live staple, screamed back at the band live, is a perfect example, as it refuses to flinch from gut-wrenching honesty. Tales of brokenness set to erupting walls of sound, tearing down the barrier of what a band can be, kicking back at what’s come before.
“I’ve always naturally been pulled to music like that,” Finn explains. “I’m quite an emotional person. I don’t know, I guess you could say I’m quite sensitive in some ways, and I really feel things. I think I’m quite trusting and that can mean… yeah, I really feel things.”
It’s a bond shared with his brother Conor, the reason Conor stands firmly to Finn’s left each and every night. Together, they built the foundations of what would become Keo.
“Just before moving to London, and this is a very strange memory, we had one of those big shisha pipes? I don’t fucking know why,” Finn cracks, “but I remember we were sat there and he was playing The Doors and Pearl Jam and Nirvana to me and he kept saying; Finn, this is it, man! This is the vehicle! This is what we’ve got to do!”
After a brief stint working at a bar in Lisbon (“I lasted two weeks”) and an equally brief belief he’d become a pro surfer or skater (“Yeah, I was deluded”), Finn saved up money by playing shows almost every night in Lisbon’s bars and clubs. That money funded the very trip to London that changed everything.
“It’s weird to think that the music has paid for the music and the music’s paid off. Do you know what I mean?”
They hit the ground running. “I went out to gigs and spoke to everyone I could to try and find a drummer and guitarist.” Playing with anyone they could, Finn and Conor had a clear vision, gravitating not toward the bands of their childhoods but those from an earlier era.
“Those bands from the 90s felt more relatable to us than the bands who were around in the 2000s,” Finn explains. “We wanted to have that 90s-esque feel to it, and we did always use that word, which I now do cringe about a bit; always saying ‘grunge, grunge, grunge, grunge!’”
Naturally, those early gigs were eye-opening. “The band, it just had to happen. It was just a case of us meeting the right people.” With guitarist Jimmy Lanwern and drummer Oli Spackman, the lineup snapped into place. Finn’s years of songwriting now had a vehicle – though it took a moment of clarity.
“I had a load of folk demos that I really liked, but when we started playing as a band, I was writing like… almost different songs to try and fit a new band.” Then the band heard one of those early demos. “They were like, Why are we not doing that?” Everything clicked. That was the real Keo.
As they grinded away playing shows mostly to friends and family, a turning point came at The George Tavern. Spotting two faces he didn’t recognise for once, it was confirmation that people would find what they were doing.
“They were in the front row, and they knew this old song of ours that isn’t even online anymore. I remember them so clearly. That probably impacted me more than the equivalent of hundreds of people. You know what I mean? It was the first time.”
Then came ‘I Lied, Amber’.
“I remember that moment, yeah. I really do.”
“I’m not going to sit and think about how to do this; I’m just going to fucking do it”
Throughout those grinding years, Keo refused to compromise or chase trends; they stayed true to their love of the music they were making. “We were very much like: this is what we’re doing, this is how it is, and we’re going to keep doing this.”
When ‘I Lied, Amber’ arrived, it felt like a firing gun. The comparisons came thick and fast – some flattering, some ridiculous. It called to mind the breakthrough moments for Wet Leg, The Last Dinner Party and others; a debut that puts pause to everything else.
“I honestly think we were in the right place at the right time,” Finn says. “The music that we’re making and the contemporary bands around us… as you can imagine, I’ve heard those comparisons to death by now, haha.”
But what quickfire social media trolls didn’t bank on was Keo proving exactly why they sit in their own distinct lane. Festival stages, standout shows and word-of-mouth marked them out as a band fuelled by ambition and only just scratching the surface.
“There was this video of ‘I Lied, Amber’ that caught attention, and I remember all this negativity and comparisons… I think at one point we got called Elvis’ grandkids? I nearly asked for the video to be taken down, and then I thought, what am I talking about? Fucking let them talk. Let them figure it out for themselves. I genuinely don’t know what would have happened if I had not thought that.”
If Keo aren’t climbing to headline festivals in the years to come, then something will have gone very wrong. As Finn reflects on a 12 months that would have seemed ridiculous back when he was sitting alone in a music room writing songs, what’s even more exciting is the hunger for what comes next.
“Without giving too much away,” he smirks, “I have been racking my brain about what kind of project I want to make. Best believe our heads will be fucking down and we’re going to be in the thick of it until March. This moment right here has been the thing I’ve wanted the most. I love making music. I love producing music. I love being in the studio. When you get something right, it’s just the best fucking feeling in the world.”
There’s no manufacturing what Keo have; it comes from something more profound.
“I think you have to be quite selfish to get music right, and it has to be all about what you would naturally do. The band have said before that it might be good to have an opener or something faster, and I have always ended up replying, I don’t know when that will come, but hopefully it will. Jimmy is always reminding me not to fall into the trap of trying to write what people want to hear. That can be fucking hard.”
One look at a sold-out Village Underground underlines that going with Finn’s instinct might be the safest bet. Trusting themselves is what brought Keo to this point: the hottest ticket in town, the band every festival wants.
“You know what…” Finn begins, thinking about what he wants people to take from a Keo show.
There’s a pause.
“You know what… I always think about this because my favourite bands have this. It’s hard to explain this feeling, but I know people will know it if they go to enough gigs. It gives you this escapism. I remember going to see Been Stellar and just feeling like there was this fantasy world in New York, and a bit of it was in that room that night.
“It gives me this feeling of, you know what, it’s alright because there’s this other world out there that I can go to if I need to. Truly, I will never know whether or not we create that kind of experience for people. Hopefully, they step into a world when they enter that venue, and they feel this better world where things are just a little bit more… I guess more beautiful. This imaginary world that, when they step into our show, they kind of get that, because there is an element of everything in Keo that is true to that, too. It is quite an amazing place to be in a lot of ways.”
He hopes Keo offer the same escape.
“I don’t know, ultimately; like, leave the room feeling fucking inspired! With whatever you’re doing. That would be the goal.”
Keo are here to fucking do just that. Prepare the biggest fields possible. ■
Taken from the December 2025 / January 2026 issue of Dork, out now.
Order this issue
This is a physical pre-order. All copies will be dispatched before 9th January 2026
Please make sure you select the correct location for your order. For example, if you are in the United States, select ‘Location: US & Rest of the World’. Failure to select the appropriate location for your delivery address will result in the cancellation of your order.
Leave a Reply