Graceless

Graceless is the Dublin project of singer-songwriter Grace Tooher, with guitarist and longtime collaborator Richie McNeill.

Imagine Sinéad O’Connor had an indie-alt affair with CMAT and added a splash of Florence Welch. Impulsive choices, poor decisions, and perfect timing.

Having cut her teeth fronting Staring at Lakes, an IMRO Other Voices-featured act, Grace relaunched under the Graceless name. The name started as a joke. She never felt good enough, never polished enough. Somewhere in that irony, it became a quiet kind of defiance.

The self-titled debut EP, released in November 2026, plays as four chapters of the same story. The Raven, with its fully animated ink-wash video, finds grace after grief. God’s Plan, a semi-finalist at the International Songwriting Competition 2025, takes aim at how religion is used to divide, control and justify conflict. It was written partly in a church during a funeral and partly in the kind of quiet rage only personal experience produces. Underwater is about choosing to stay submerged, feeding the dark dog rather than climbing out. Pillow Talk closes the story somewhere lighter and more exposed: a song for people who are bad at having crushes.

Grace describes the EP as confronting herself: her past, her beliefs, her dark habits and her shyness around love.

BBC Introducing called Underwater “a confident release, think Arcade Fire, Florence and the Machine, and early evening on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury.”

Live, Graceless is a five-piece, with Michele Doddi (bass), Gavin Carroll (guitar) and Ethan Butler (drums) joining Grace and Richie. Dates at Whelan’s, Smock Alley Theatre and The Works Festival, plus a sold-out hometown headline at Nenagh Arts Centre, confirm that the audience is catching up to where the music already was.