10 Essential Kingfishr Songs: The Tracks You Need to Hear

By Chris Kennedy | Published 6th Oct, 2026

Kingfishr’s rise has been unusually rapid, but the songs behind it have been years in the making. The Irish trio of Eddie Keogh, Eoghan McGoo McGrath and Eoin Fitz Fitzgibbon have developed a sound that draws from folk storytelling and traditional Irish music without allowing either to become a limitation. Acoustic guitars and banjo sit beside enormous choruses, atmospheric production and the kind of emotional crescendos designed to travel from a quiet room to the back of an arena. The result is music that can feel intensely personal one moment and completely communal the next.

That balance is at the heart of Kingfishr. Their songs repeatedly return to love, regret, home, mortality, ambition and the frightening business of choosing what kind of life you want to live. Even as their audiences have grown, the writing has remained fascinated by ordinary decisions and specific places. It helps explain how a song about walking away from a conventional career can become a live ritual, or how a hastily written tribute to a small East Cork hurling club can end up being sung by thousands of people who have never been anywhere near the place.

For anyone discovering Kingfishr for the first time, these ten songs offer an ideal route through that story.

Anyway

There is something beautifully understated about Anyway. Built around memory, absence and the lingering emotional weight of a relationship, it captures the strange experience of looking backwards and discovering that feelings rarely disappear as neatly as people might like. Musically, it demonstrates Kingfishr's talent for starting small before allowing a song to steadily open up around Keogh's expressive vocal. Reflective without becoming overly sentimental, Anyway is Kingfishr at their most intimate.

Caroline

One of Kingfishr's defining early songs, Caroline transforms memories of a relationship into something much larger and more cathartic. Keogh begins from a place of vulnerability before acoustic instrumentation, harmonies and a soaring melody gradually push the song towards the band's increasingly familiar widescreen sound. It has subsequently become a powerful live favourite, where its mixture of heartbreak and nostalgia turns into a communal singalong.

Flowers-Fire

Kingfishr's 2022 debut Flowers-Fire already contained much of the blueprint for what the band would become. Centred around memories of love, regret and the possibility of starting again, its striking title captures the contradiction at the heart of the song: something beautiful continuing to bloom while simultaneously being consumed. Guitar, banjo and layered vocals steadily build around the story, introducing the combination of folk instrumentation and dramatic crescendos that would become central to Kingfishr's sound.

Shot In The Dark

Few songs tell Kingfishr's own story better than Shot In The Dark. It was written on the night the three musicians decided to commit themselves properly to the band, walking away from conventional careers despite having no guarantee that music would work. That uncertainty remains embedded in the track. Driven by guitar, banjo and voices, it has the simplicity of an old folk song while capturing a thoroughly modern dilemma: sometimes the only way to discover whether a dream is possible is to risk failing at it.

Shadow

There is considerably more darkness beneath Shadow than its bright melodic surface initially suggests. The song explores the idea of suppressing uncomfortable parts of yourself and discovering that what has been buried continues to exert influence from somewhere underneath. Kingfishr cleverly contrast that psychological weight with jangling, uplifting instrumentation, allowing darkness and optimism to exist simultaneously. It is an effective example of the band's ability to place complicated emotions inside immediately accessible songs.

The Blade

The Blade finds Kingfishr moving into much heavier emotional territory. It deals with loneliness, unexplained sadness and the consequences of repeatedly pushing difficult feelings aside rather than confronting them. The arrangement matches that seriousness, carrying a greater dramatic weight while retaining the gradual rise and emotional release associated with the band's best material. Melancholic but never completely defeated, The Blade shows a darker and increasingly ambitious side of Kingfishr's songwriting.

The Sun Will Never Settle

Rather than treating the end of a relationship as either tragedy or betrayal, The Sun Will Never Settle finds something more complicated in the aftermath. It is about accepting that a relationship can end while still having changed both people for the better. Warm acoustic guitar and banjo reinforce that sense of reflection, while the melody keeps moving forward rather than sinking into regret. It is a break-up song with an unusual amount of grace.

Heart In The Water

Heart In The Water tackles one of Kingfishr's recurring themes: the need to take chances while there is still time to take them. Concerned with mortality and the fleeting nature of life, the song reaches beyond romance towards a broader question of how somebody chooses to spend the time available to them. Traditional folk textures sit alongside atmospheric, cinematic production, creating a song that feels simultaneously intimate and expansive.

Diamonds & Roses

On Diamonds & Roses, Kingfishr turn their attention towards fame and the changing nature of celebrity in an era of social media, livestreams and almost constant access to public figures. There is an interesting tension between that scepticism and the music itself: polished, immediate and powered by a chorus made for enormous crowds. It is one of Kingfishr's most infectious songs, but beneath the surface is a band considering what success actually looks like once you get close enough to see behind the shine.

Killeagh

The extraordinary thing about Killeagh is that it was never supposed to become a national anthem. Written after Fitz promised a song for the Killeagh hurling club in East Cork if they reached a final, it grew from a local tribute into one of Kingfishr's defining songs. Its references are deeply rooted in a particular community, yet that specificity is precisely what makes it universal. Simple, melodic and unmistakably Irish, “Killeagh” understands that songs about home do not need to describe everybody's home to remind people what their own means to them.

Final Verdict

The essential Kingfishr songs reveal a band whose biggest strength is not simply their ability to write choruses large enough for arenas. It is their ability to make those choruses feel earned. Beneath the banjos, acoustic guitars, swelling harmonies and increasingly expansive production are songs built around recognisable human decisions: whether to stay or leave, whether to say what you are frightened of saying, whether to confront the parts of yourself you would rather hide, whether to take the risk before the opportunity disappears.

That is why early songs such as Flowers-Fire, Anyway and Heart In The Water remain important beside later material. They contain the foundations of everything Kingfishr have subsequently become: the fascination with memory, the cinematic build, Keogh’s distinctive vocal and the instinct to connect contemporary songwriting with something older in Irish musical storytelling. Caroline turns memory into catharsis, Shadow finds darkness beneath brightness, The Blade confronts a much heavier internal struggle, while The Sun Will Never Settle discovers grace in accepting that not every ending needs a villain.

Shot In The Dark may provide the clearest statement of the band's own journey because its gamble has now become their reality. But Killeagh arguably explains Kingfishr even better. Written quickly, rooted unapologetically in one small Irish community and almost accidentally released into the wider world, it succeeded because the details were real. In singing so specifically about one place, Kingfishr gave countless listeners a way to think about their own.

That remains the thread connecting their best music. The scale may keep increasing, but the story has to come first.

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