I’ve had Annie-Dog‘s song Fish in the playlist since I first heard it back in May via The Line of Best Fit. It’s such a weird song, it sounds like it’s trying to be a traditional pop song but someone won’t stop fiddling with the knobs in the control room. There are a million little glitchy elements and fragments of interesting ideas in this thing. Every time it comes on I play it like 3 times in a row because I catch another little detail:

It’s kind of like having your car radio pick up two stations at once, and somehow they fit together.

The stage name was inspired by the last great Smashing Pumpkins song. Her name is Catherine Leahy, and I think she’s from Dublin. Last week her full self-titled EP was released, and it’s like the song above, but it’s also so much more than that song.

There is such a texture to each song. As with Fish, they all have pretty much a standard indie-pop core, but there is so much going on in each track that listening to them on fancy headphones is essential, and it’s a trip.

Here’s the first track from the EP, The Pressures of the Heart:

The video reflects the song – it’s weird, surprising, and deliberately, almost frustratingly offbeat. Almost is the key word there – nothing is a gimmick, nothing is superfluous, it’s all cohesive. It’s different and complex, and it works. It’s a difficult balance to strike.

Here’s her other music video, for a song called Double Cherry. It’s a lyric video, which highlights the other strength of the EP – the songwriting is full of confessional, evocative language and creative, sometimes ambiguous phrasing:

There isn’t much else available about Catherine Leahy — what her story is, or how this whole project came to be. I hope this release gets the attention it deserves, it is endlessly listenable, and one of the stongest collections of songs of 2024.

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