Mischa and the Bear

Two middle names and a bedroom studio

mischa and the bear began in early 2025 in a shared flat in Dublin, which doubled as the studio and still does. Danny Rooney had already spent about a decade in and around the Irish independent scene, latterly in the indie pop band modernlove., and was producing for other artists when his housemate Fírinne McIntyre suggested they write something together instead of for other people. The name is unglamorous in origin: it is their two middle names set side by side, Rooney as Mischa and McIntyre as the bear.

The division of labour is clean. Rooney produces and plays bass, McIntyre writes and sings, including in Irish. Everything released so far was written, recorded and produced by the pair in that bedroom set-up, which goes a long way to explaining the finish on the records — close, compressed, airless in places, with synths that sound deliberately underfed rather than expensive.

Asked in June 2026 to describe the result, the duo offered "dark, punchy, and sometimes ethereal", and reached for the image of walking into a nightclub in a dystopian universe. The reference points they name run from Crystal Castles through Grimes and FKA twigs to Charli XCX, Oklou and Magdalena Bay — a lineage that takes in both club music and the kind of pop that treats the voice as another machine.

Deny, and the first EP

The debut single "Deny" went out on 29 April 2025: bleepy electroclash, the vocal half-buried in witch-house murk, running two and a half minutes and not outstaying it. Nialler9 picked it up on release and placed it in Crystal Castles territory, noting the indie-sleaze nostalgia running under the production. McIntyre's account of the lyric was more specific than the genre tags suggest — intrusive thoughts eroding a sense of self, dissociation blurring the line between the human and the mechanical, a person stuck in the motions of an ordinary day.

Two further singles arrived across 2025, "Get Away" and "Forever Ago", followed by the first EP, Even Unto The Next World, which collected "Forever Ago", "Sing It" and the paired "All I Wanted / I'll See You Again". It is a short record that commits to one idea rather than auditioning several, and it set the template the duo have worked from since: a hard, danceable floor, vocals treated until they sit somewhere between sung and sampled, and an ending that tends to arrive abruptly.

The 2026 singles and True Colours

Four singles came out across 2026 — "Bleach", "Abair", "I Don't Care" and "Evil" — and they are noticeably less reverent than the first EP. "Abair" is the Irish-language one, and the clearest evidence that McIntyre's bilingual writing is a working part of the project rather than a gesture. The video for "Bleach" was built on the visual language of Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine, which tells you how the pair think about presentation: film reference first, budget second.

"I Don't Care" was premiered through District Magazine on 25 June 2026 and released the following day, with a video directed by Sam Griff that cuts brutalist concrete and flat daylight against night-time neon and mixed media. The duo described the track as an "us against the world" mindset set against a militant, anthemic and dark tone, and framed it as obsessive attachment with an apocalypse somewhere in the background. It was the second teaser from the EP.

True Colours followed on 21 August 2026 — five tracks, the second EP, with "Drown", "Aero" and "Evil" among them. The videos have travelled further than the streaming numbers: three of them have been selected at the Berlin Music Video Awards, where the duo took a Silver Selection. For an act whose records are made in a bedroom, the visual side is doing a disproportionate share of the work.

Standing, autumn 2026

Irish radio has carried most of the momentum. RTÉ 2FM named them a Rising Artist for 2026 and has made them Track of the Week four separate times; they have also had plays on BBC Across the Line and Radio X, and placements on the Spotify editorial lists alt_ie and A Breath of Fresh Éire. The written coverage has been small-outlet but consistent: ChordBlossom called the work intelligent and emotionally resonant, while Babystep Magazine picked out industrial textures, distorted beats and a haunting intensity.

The audience figures are still modest and worth stating plainly rather than dressing up. At the end of September 2026 the duo had roughly 4,665 monthly listeners and 1,327 followers on Spotify, with Dublin by some distance the top listening city ahead of London, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Rooney's previous work has passed ten million streams, which marks out exactly how far this project still has to travel to reach the ceiling he has already touched once.

The most consequential dated development is the one that takes them out of Ireland. On 22 September 2026, Eurosonic Noorderslag announced the first 42 acts for its 2027 edition and mischa and the bear were among them, billed as an alternative pop duo blending synth-pop and witch house into their own reading of indie sleaze. The festival runs in Groningen from 13 to 16 January 2027, and the duo have described it as their debut abroad — a showcase festival aimed squarely at European bookers and agents, which is the point of it.

A year of rooms, from first gig to tour support

The live history is short enough to list without padding. Their first gig was at the Grand Social in Dublin on 13 May 2026, on an Issue.07 bill with Sheriff and d_abdu, and the duo have said the lights, sound and crowd went above and beyond what they had expected — the sort of thing new acts say, but in this case it preceded a run of bookings that suggests promoters agreed. Three weeks later, on 5 June 2026, they were special guests for Kiesza at the Academy's Green Room in Dublin, a pairing that put their harder electro material in front of a straightforwardly dance-pop audience.

A Culture Night date at St Luke's in Cork followed over the summer, then an Ireland Music Week showcase at the Grand Social Ballroom on 1 October 2026 — the Irish industry's annual gathering of bookers and label staff, and the event most directly responsible for acts landing Eurosonic slots. On Tuesday 10 November 2026 they headline Tilt #43 at the Button Factory in Dublin, a 19:30 start on a three-act bill with barrelling and Mount Pyrus.

The four dates currently on sale are the Adult DVD Irish tour, where mischa and the bear are the special guests throughout: the Grand Social in Dublin on 25 November 2026, the Ulster Sports Club in Belfast on 26 November, Róisín Dubh in Galway on 27 November and Dolan's in Limerick on 28 November. Tickets went on general sale in early September 2026 through a mix of Ticketmaster, Eventbrite and the venues directly. It is a well-matched run — four small rooms, a headliner working similar territory, and the last Irish shows before Groningen.