Hailing from Limerick with an inherited love of ‘90s alt-rock from her parents, Emily Dollery took up the guitar at twelve and, four years later, wanted to play in her Transition Year school band, but, with a surplus of guitarists, her music teacher suggested that she learn the bass. Emily obliged and soon fell in love with the four-stringed instrument.

Emily then got involved with the local branch of Music Generation, the nationwide organisation dedicated to fostering the musical talents of youths aged zero to eighteen, and became aware of her native county’s alternative artists, such as Bleeding Heart Pigeons, His Father’s Voice, and Anna’s Anchor.

After finishing secondary school, Emily moved to Cork to study English and Music at University College Cork. While enlisted there, Emily got involved with their campus radio station, UCC 98.3FM, and hosted the programme “Set Guitars to Kill,” which was named after an And So I Watch You From Afar song.

While working for the station, Emily met Cormac Donovan O’Neill, a DJ who was hosting the show “Radio Free UCC.” In contrast to Emily, Cormac wasn’t a music student. He had taken some piano lessons, but quickly grew tired of formal musical education and took up the guitar instead in his late teens. At that time, he was focusing on releasing ambient soundscapes and instrumentals on SoundCloud.

With carte blanche over their programmes’ playlists, the two bonded over their similar interests, such as Lingua Ignota, Wednesday, Mogwai, Slint, Percolator, and Elastic Sleep. “Myself and Cormac met through that radio station, and, for a while, it’d be like if there was some really weird, experimental gig on, we’d often go together because it was like, ‘Nobody else is going to agree to come to this with me!’,” laughs Emily when she spoke with Post-Burnout.

“So, I think we were able to spot each other in that way, in that we knew that we were both people who were willing to do weird stuff. I absolutely think I became more and more drawn to really loud, blown-out, abrasive stuff through that, and I definitely think it did get me thinking, ‘Oh, I’d love to do something like this. It must be so cathartic to create something like that,’ because I hadn’t really been involved in a noise rock project before then.”

With mutual tastes and inspirations from the litany of new artists they were featuring on their shows, the idea of starting a band together was born. “Initially, I had a few bits that I had kind of thrown together when I should’ve been working, when I was working at the radio station, like,” admits Emily.

“If I had nothing to do, I used to lock myself into the podcast studio and just mess around with MIDI stuff [Laughs] and throw in a million vocal tracks into Reaper and come up with these really weird harmonies and stuff.

“Initially, I had Beach House, Broadcast…that kind of quirky, dream-poppy, lo-fi stuff in mind. I think, at first, we were kind of thorn, influence-wise, if we wanted to go that route, or I also really like a lot of kind of, I suppose, folk-infused rock bands, or even bands like Wednesday, where they bring in that country influence. They’re probably my favourite current band going. Or Big Thief, I know, was on the inspiration playlist I made.

“We put together a collab playlist of sounds to pull from, and I think it ended up being about nine hours long! [Laughs] It kind of devolved from there! We started kind of going in and jamming in our rehearsal space, and it took on a bit of a new, more horrifying, off-putting form! [Laughs]”

“I think, looking back on that playlist, you can kind of see the direction it would go, from this sort of very shoegaze-inflicted folk rock bands to eventually just getting to stuff like CLADA and Earth,” Cormac adds. “I think that ended up being somewhat closer to what we do now, for definite.”

With the addition of the drummer Eoin Schuck, the band Therapy Horse was born. The band formally began in late 2023, and, despite having no music out, they have already garnered a huge following in their local scene, thanks to support slots for the likes of I Dreamed I Dream, Silverglass, and The Guilteens, which has springboarded them into opportunities to headline their own fully-attended shows.

But as the band were growing their legs, the local musician Fionnbharr Hickey was looking to revamp his band, Pebbledash, and happened to enlist Cormac and Eoin! Despite the massive amount of traction Pebbledash have been gaining since releasing the material from their recent EP, Four Portraits of the Same Ugly House, over the past year, which has seen them perpetually on the road, Cormac doesn’t seem to find it difficult to balance the two.

“It hasn’t really been much of a challenge, at the moment,” Cormac claims. “Especially because we’re all good friends, you know? Obviously, the two of us… – myself and Schuck – …are in Pebbledash, and Emily would’ve played bass on tour with us at times, and we’re all very close with Pebbledash.

“And I think whenever you’re involved in projects like that, and you want to give your creative energy to them, it’s just about communication, and making sure that everyone is aware of a gig here and a gig there. Scheduling and communication are really how you get there.

“And it hasn’t really caused any kind of conflict, or tension, or anything, which is great. And I think it’s great to be able to express, creatively, I suppose, somewhat overlapping but quite distinct, really, pools of influence that I drew from. It’s helpful to the development, I think, of a person, creatively, to be able to explore all facets of their musicianship, and, in that way, kind of bring what you get from that back into every project.”

Today, the uninitiated will have the opportunity to finally hear what’s been causing a stir in the real capital, as Therapy Horse drop their debut single, “Let Me Be Clear.” The song is one from some sessions that the band did with Andy Killian, the drummer of the Cork band Pretty Happy, who has also produced for Pebbledash and I Dreamed I Dream, and mixed by Pete Maher, who has worked for U2, Pixies, and Nick Cave.

For the members, it was the perfect entry point for new listeners. “It’s my favourite one to play live, anyway, out of the set,” says Emily. “And I think it does encapsulate a good bit of our ethos. It’s definitely a bit of an oddball track; it doesn’t have a chorus, it doesn’t have any singing. [Laughs]

“Basically, we’re a really jammy band; most of our songs really come about from going in, jamming, throwing stuff at the wall, and then refining it. It’s in the process of refinement that some of the songs take months and months [until] we’re happy gigging them. We started writing in March of 2024, I want to say, and our first gig wasn’t until a year later, you know?

“Even though we’re noisy and feedback-y and everything, I think we are quite perfectionistic when it comes to structure and making a song stand out, and that was one of the first ones, I think, that really stood out to us.”  

Cormac agrees. “I think it is just such a fun song to play live,” he says. “The first gig we ever did was at the Record Room in Limerick, and whenever you’re playing your first gig, you’re always kind of…not apprehensive, but you’re unsure of how some songs that you’ve played loads of times in a rehearsal space will be received by people, but we really liked ‘Let Me Be Clear,’ and we always close our set with that, and I think it was a very natural one to release as the debut single.”

The lyrics for the track came from Emily dictating her emotions, as she noticed she was feeling angry on a train journey. “It’s definitely a song I put a lot of myself into,” she says. “It’s basically about abuse; specifically, misogynistic abuse. I think there’s nearly an act one and an act two of the song, which is probably a very English student way of viewing it. [Laughs]

“I would say it starts with parsing these feelings and this emotional blunting that a lot of people have to experience to survive, you know? Experiencing a traumatic event. And I would say that the second part, where it gets loud, is this big emotional release, and it’s this realisation of what you’ve been put through, and no longer wanting to be the person who takes it, and tapping into your anger is something cleansing.

“We’ve kind of made allusions to Lingua Ignota being a big influence for the band, even though she’s incredibly sophisticated and someone that I would feel a little bit shy in saying is an influence, because she’s a genius with the neoclassical darkwave compositions she has going on; it’s metal without guitars, basically, or noise without guitars.

“But I think the way that she writes about her personal experiences and distils them, and the way she’s able to communicate raw emotion, and anger, and pain, but, also, fear at the same time, was really a huge influence when we were writing that song. And it’s one, as well, that’s very cathartic to perform, as well.

“It’s one we’ve put a lot of ourselves into, but that’s the main theme, really: It’s about navigating trauma, and realising that you’ve been through something horrific, and there isn’t anything good to come out of it, but you can start anew. Even though it doesn’t sound hopeful, to me, it is a hopeful song.”

Following the release of their “Let Me Be Clear,” Therapy Horse are looking forward to the expansion that finally having music out will bring them. “We’ve a few bits germinating for the rest of 2025, besides that,” Cormac says. “We have a few gigs that we can’t confirm at the moment.

“We’ve a few things planned, and we’re really, really excited. I think, definitely, for the next year we want to do more recording, because we have quite a good idea of some of the songs that we’ve been gigging since the early Therapy Horse gigs, because we’ve spent so long in rehearsal spaces since we started gigging. So, we’re eager to get an EP or something.” “I hope we get to headline the Marquee next year!” quips Emily. “I think it’s doable!”

Therapy Horse’s debut single, “Let Me Be Clear,” is out today. You can keep up with the band through their Linktree.

Therapy Horse will be performing live at:

Sep. 6^th – Dublin – Upstairs at Whelan’s (supporting Silverglass)

Sep. 11^th – Cork – Kino (w/ Silverglass and Jodie Lyne)

Tune into POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews… tonight at 21:00 (IST) to hear this interview in full. Available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music Podcasts.

Aaron Kavanagh

Aaron Kavanagh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Post-Burnout. His writing can also be found in the Irish Daily Star, Buzz.ie, Totally Dublin, The GOO, Headstuff, New Noise Magazine, XS Noize, DSCVRD and more.