New Irish Music #9: Little Hours

Welcome to our music series featuring the best in fresh, exciting Irish music.

Every month, we'll profile a new (or relatively new) Irish band or artist, give you a flavour of what they're all about, let you know what they're up to lately - and most importantly, let you hear their music.

The ninth act in the series is Little Hours.

WHO ARE THEY? They're Ryan McCloskey and John Doherty, a singer/songwriter duo from Donegal who formed just over a year ago.

WHAT'S WITH THE NAME? "Shortly after starting the band, we went to studio to record ‘It’s Still Love’ and ‘Tired’," they explain. "At this point, we hadn’t even really thought about a name. It wasn’t until we were getting ready to release the songs that we began looking for one. One night we stayed up into the ‘little hours’ of the morning wrecking our heads for a name. That’s basically how we got it. We wish we had a cooler story."

WHAT DO THEY SOUND LIKE? It's gentle, folk-rock stuff, or in their own words, "our music is based around piano, acoustic guitar and vocal harmonies."

WHO ARE THEIR INFLUENCES? "We have so many influences. Everything that we hear or have grown up listening to influenced us, but to name a few: Bon Iver, Van Morrison, Ben Howard and Coldplay."

WHAT HAVE THEY BEEN UP TO LATELY? Their debut single 'It's Still Love' got a truckload of airplay and landed them a nomination for the Meteor Choice 2014 Song of the Year. Since then, they've signed to RCA Records and have spent the past year playing shows all around Ireland. "We’ve been lucky enough to support some of our favourite acts such as James Bay, The Staves, Kodaline, Walking On Cars, Gavin James and Hudson Taylor," they say. "Over the festival season we played Indiependence in Cork, Groove in Bray and most recently Electric Picnic in Stradbally. We’re also constantly writing new music. We’ve been over to London a few times on songwriting trips and have have built up a number of new songs. At the moment we’re preparing to go on our first ever headline tour of Ireland. We play Dublin, Cork, Galway and Limerick in October. We’re very excited about this and are really looking forward to playing some brand new songs live!"

WHAT CAN WE EXPECT FROM THE ALBUM, THEN? "At the moment we’re still writing new songs and experimenting with different sounds for the album. We’ve spent some time in studio demoing some new stuff and we’ve been excited by the results. Hopefully when we release the album, it’ll sound like Little Hours."

CAN I HAVE A LISTEN? Check out their singles 'It's Still Love' and 'Tired' below, and catch them live at Whelan's, Dublin on October 15th and Roisin Dubh, Galway on October 17th.