BABYRAT

A bracket at Cyprus Avenue

BABYRAT formed in Cork City in late 2024 and spent their first months on the local competition circuit rather than in a studio. University College Cork's student paper, the University Express, caught them in a Battle of the Bands bracket at Cyprus Avenue in the run-up to the final on Wednesday 5 March 2025, describing a set built on sharp local commentary and a frontwoman whose delivery landed every line, and ending with guitarist Jamie Kierans climbing onto an audience member's shoulders to finish the song. The same paper's Mia Tobin Power later credited the band with confidence and chemistry beyond their age, a line the band still carry on their Breaking Tunes profile.

The core of the group is Zoe Jordan on vocals with Kierans and Matthew Lucas on guitars. Headcount is one of the few things about them that is not settled: their own website and the trade press describe a four-piece, while Hot Press counted a Cork quintet on stage at Electric Picnic in August 2026. They call what they do bitch-pop, glossed in their own press as pop music wearing rock music's clothes, and the reference points that recur in coverage are The Strokes for the guitar writing, Paramore for the scale of the choruses and Olivia Rodrigo for the songwriting.

'Roses', and the twenty-two months before it

The debut single arrived on 17 September 2026. Zoe Jordan wrote it acoustically after a break-up, and the band describe it as the moment love curdles into spite in a coming-of-age setting. It had opened more than seventy-five of their live sets before anyone could hear a recording of it — by the time it reached streaming services, crowds in Cork and London already knew the words.

It was recorded at Camden Studios in Dublin and produced by Kierans with Alessandro Di Camillio. At roughly three minutes it stacks guitars under a vocal that moves between a soft, close delivery and open shouting, and it is rooted in specific Cork geography: the lyric tracks a night from acoustic sessions at The Roundy to dancing at An Bróg. Reviewers picked up on what the release order implied — that a live following can be the thing that produces a record rather than the prize for an online one.

Two further songs, 'First to Know' and 'Talk Talk', are fixtures of the set and are listed on the band's Breaking Tunes page, but neither has an announced release date, and no EP or album has been confirmed.

The support-slot apprenticeship

The band count around eighty shows since forming, and the bulk of their profile has come from opening for other people. They supported Jack White at Dublin's 3Olympia Theatre while still unreleased, and have also opened for Taking Back Sunday, Feeder, Bell X1 and The Coronas. The festival record is similarly front-loaded: Electric Picnic, All Together Now and Other Voices, alongside sold-out headline dates of their own in Cork and London.

That sequence — arena and theatre support slots before a single note on streaming — is the unusual part of the story, and it explains the gap between their release history and the size of the rooms they are playing.

Three sets and a downpour at Stradbally

Electric Picnic on Friday 28 August 2026 gave the clearest picture of where the band had got to. They played the Salty Dog stage at four in the afternoon for about an hour, with Jordan stalking the stage in check shorts and a Sid and Nancy t-shirt and working the crowd between songs — asking who had been out the night before, who was hungover. When the rain came down mid-set she told the crowd they were already wet and might as well embrace it, and the audience stayed.

Hot Press noted the thing that should not have been possible: a substantial number of people singing along to material that had never been released. The set drew in passers-by on the strength of the riffs alone and closed on 'Bambino', with 'Anybody Else But You' and 'I'm So Babyrat' also aired. The band played twice more across the weekend, at Fish Town on the Saturday evening and the Rockshore Live stage on the Sunday afternoon, with a Hot Press Chat Room appearance in between.

Where they stand in September 2026

The diary since the single has stayed dense. They played the Sunday Seisiún at the London Irish Centre on 20 September 2026 and Other Voices in Derry on 25 and 26 September. In October they take on their first proper UK run, supporting Dylan Flynn and the Dead Poets between the 8th and the 15th with dates in Manchester, London, Brighton, Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow, and on 13 November they appear at BBC Introducing x Shine in Belfast.

The headline step comes after that. Announced in September 2026 and on sale via Ticketmaster Ireland, BABYRAT's first Irish headline tour runs 23 February 2027 at Dolans Kasbah in Limerick, 24 February at Róisín Dubh in Galway, 25 February at The Grand Social in Dublin and 26 February at the Savoy in Cork, with a London date at the Dublin Castle on 4 March. The Savoy booking is the notable one — a homecoming into a room several sizes up from Cyprus Avenue, less than two years after the bracket that started them.

What is still missing is a body of recorded work. One single, two well-worn unreleased songs and no announced record leaves the band in an odd position for February: a headline tour where most of the set will be material the audience can only have learned in person.