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.
Cliffords started last year by playing 50-cap venues. They’re ending this one having sold out Hackney’s 400-cap Oslo, slammed out festival tents across Europe, and supported stadium-rock heavyweights Kings of Leon and Queens of the Stone Age. If that isn’t a stratospheric rise, we don’t know what is.
In the midst of all these shows, they released their stunning second EP, ‘Salt of the Lee’, a four-song tribute to their beloved County Cork that announced the band as so much more than another alt-pop band.
Whether in the form of soulful folk-rock track ‘R&H Hall’, blasting grunge anthem ‘Bittersweet’, irresistibly catchy singalong ‘My Favourite Monster’, or heartstring-tugging homage to a lost friend’ Dungarvan Bay’, they opened themselves up to possibilities that were truly endless.
Catching frontwoman Iona Lynch a few short days before jetting over to the UK for their tour, it’s hard for her not to be overwhelmed by just how far the quartet have come in the last twelve months.
“We’re really good at being present in the moment,” she considers. “If you’re too out of your body or stressed about it, you’ll never remember all those privileged things we got to do. We had more than a lifetime’s worth of excitement all in one summer.”
That excitement peaked during a weekend at Glastonbury, which not only saw them pack out the Left Field stage but also prove their mettle with a live performance on the BBC.
“Glastonbury was the best experience of my entire life,” Iona recalls. “It was such a milestone moment that I just never thought we’d do.
“Whenever I go to gigs, especially at the RDS Arena, I always think ‘I’m going to play this room one day’ because I think you have to have that arrogance when you’re starting out or trying to make it, but Glastonbury was never even on my radar.”
She continues: “If you’d told me three days before either the Kings of Leon or the Queens of the Stone Age show, I wouldn’t have believed you. We only found out about those two days before, and it all happened so fast that we didn’t have time to worry.”
“We had more than a lifetime’s worth of excitement all in one summer”
These experiences wouldn’t have been possible without the response to ‘Salt of the Lee’, which broke them out of the alt-pop scene and catapulted them somewhere entirely their own. An EP that contains one of Iona’s favourite-ever Cliffords songs, its reach and rise brought with it shockwaves she could never have predicted.
“Yeah, ‘Salt of the Lee’ is such a funny one. We had those songs written two years ago and never really thought that anyone would hear them. I was surprised at how much everyone liked ‘Bittersweet’ because it was quite different for us, but then ‘R&H Hall’ is one of the best songs we’ve ever written, I think, and it gets overlooked a little bit.
“The most surprising thing for me is how much it’s resonated with people who aren’t from Cork. It’s so location-based that I’m always amazed people relate to it. We played a show in Eindhoven, and a girl in the front was screaming back, ‘There’s a black dog running down around your Merchant’s Quay’, and I remember thinking, ‘You’ve never been to Merchant’s Quay!’ It blew me away that a girl from the Netherlands was so passionate about our songs.”
Part of the job now, more than ever, is taking the rough with the smooth. Cliffords have had a year the quartet could only have dreamed of at the start of 2025, but their huge increase in fans brings with it a huge increase in fear for Iona.
“Oh yeah, I think I went insane!” she admits.
“Now there’s more pressure on us. I get writer’s block more than I used to because I care so much about people’s perception of me as an artist.”
Thankfully, being in a band as tight-knit as Cliffords, the camaraderie at the heart of everything prevails.
“It reached a point where the lads just went, ‘OK, something’s not working’, and I had to be honest with myself and say, ‘Yeah, I’m just not writing like myself’.
“From there, I got back into my original mindset. You can’t live in fear of people’s perception of you, and I don’t think we have to prove anything to anyone. It’s the scariest thing in the world to create art, but you can’t be scared of being cringe or just being shit, frankly, because an equal number of people will think you’re great. We like the place the band is going.”
Iona symbolises the atmosphere across the band: strong, committed, and with absolutely no desire to be anybody but themselves. This desire goes far beyond sound. It cuts into something more pressing: the ongoing, grinding swing back toward misogyny in music.
“I saw a TikTok some girl made of us once where she talked to some lads who said, ‘We’d hate to be lads in that band, all the attention’s focused on her’. Like, sorry, I’m a frontperson, what do you want me to do? Just be honest, you don’t want to see a woman performing on stage. It’s a symptom of the job to demand attention. People don’t like a woman who’s confident in herself on stage; they’re threatened by it.”
This is especially relevant to Iona, who has long been invested in the topic.
“I wrote my dissertation on sexism in the music industry in Ireland, and honestly, I thought it was getting better. But then you see big Irish bands go on tour in the US and the UK, take five bands on each tour, and not have one woman on the lineup. That’s 50 people. There’s a whole side to the industry that’s ingrained against women and minorities; it’s such a boys’ club.
“My big issue with bands like that is that their audience is young girls. They owe everything to them. Wouldn’t it be good for a young girl to see another girl on stage so that she knows that could be her one day?”
Not only is Iona acting as exactly that role model, but the music ushering in Cliffords’ new chapter vibrates with enough snarling frustration and power to propel them several rungs up the ladder.
Entering 2026 with a crash, bang, and wallop, Cliffords aren’t messing about. Their soon-to-be-released new track ‘Marsh’, an ode to Seasonal Affective Disorder, sears with riffs, crashing drums, and a vocal performance that has to be heard to be believed. It transforms them again, pushing them from the edges of alt-pop into a fully fledged grungy alt-rock outfit.
Back that up with ‘Blondie’, a love letter to Iona’s hero Debbie Harry that has so far only lived in tour setlists, and it’s clear any imposter syndrome has been thrown away.
“’Marsh’ is a fun one,” Iona smiles. “I wrote it about working in the gift shop next to the Blarney Castle last Christmas. They started playing the same ten Christmas songs on repeat in November, and I worked from 7am to 6pm, so I didn’t see daylight for months.
“I wanted it to feel like you’re stuck in that cloud of sadness, everything’s grey, but also there’s a little bit of hope in there. All of my songs are quite dour and depressing, but they have that light in them, whether it’s friendship or nature, that brings you out of the fog.
“It’s really fun to play live. It’s in the Big Thief-inspired guitar, folk-rock-grunge, ‘Bittersweet’ world, which is kind of where we’re going. We’re moving away from the ‘Shattered Glass’-type songs; it’s a stepping stone to what’s coming.”
So what exactly is coming next?
“At the moment, I just want to make a Geese record,” Iona laughs. “I hear a Geese song or a Divorce song and I’m like, ‘That’s it. That’s the sound’.
“It’s hard when you’re influenced by everything all the time, but not forcing ourselves into a strict image or sound gives us the opportunity to change. I’d never write a song like ‘Strawberry Scented’ now, and to be honest there are parts of ‘Salt of the Lee’ that I’d change, but that’s a good thing because it means you’re growing into the place you’re meant to be. We want to keep discovering ourselves as musicians, we’re not stopping or ever satisfied.”
After two EPs – and some early Bandcamp releases Iona would rather forget – that have built them a diehard fanbase and serious hype, talk naturally turns to the five-letter word beginning with ‘a’.
“There will be an as-yet-undefined amount of currently unwritten music in the New Year,” Iona teases.
“Obviously, I’d love to write an album, but there’s so much pressure on the first one that I’m not going to think about it until I have to. We’ll just make something we’re happy with and then get it right on the third go like Radiohead or something!”
She adds: “We’re not trying to rush it too much. We’re having a good time writing together. The songs we’re making now are my favourite that we’ve written in a long time. We just want to grow as much as we can.”
Equal parts hype and heart, 2026 might just be the Year of the Cliffords. ■
Taken from the December 2025 / January 2026 issue of Dork, out now.
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