Kelly Branagan grew up with a father and brother who played guitar. When it came time for her to learn an instrument, she, naturally, chose the ukulele. But during the COVID-19 lockdowns, she began playing the electric guitars hanging around her house; autodidactically learning Arctic Monkey riffs.

Still a teen as the lockdowns ended, Kelly joined her first band. “It was a small, secondary school band,” she tells Post-Burnout. “It was a bit of fun, though. We started off playing covers, as most bands do, just in my friend’s shed in his garden in Kells. [Laughs] It was a bit of fun. We would cover Cure songs. We wrote a few originals – like, maybe one or two.”

While this band would dissipate, Kelly began her own solo career, crafting what she describes as “really shitty indie pop kind of stuff.” While Kelly recorded some material in her bedroom, which she later released, she was still finding her footing as a songwriter.

After secondary school, Kelly moved from Meath to Dublin to study Moving Image Design at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD). In her first year of college, she met a fellow musician named Joshua Hayes, and the two wanted to start something. Anything.

 “We wanted to start a society in college,” Kelly recalls. “We wanted to start a Live Music Society, because the DJ Society and DJs in NCAD are very big, but we were both really surprised in first year that there were no other live music things going on.

“When we met each other, we both bonded over music and stuff like that, and we were like, ‘How about we try and see if other people are into it, and want to jam sometime?’ So, we just messaged into the NCAD Music Society that we’re going to have a jam on this day, and whoever wants to come should come.

“That’s when we met Oisin [McGough]. We actually met Oisin on the first day of that. He was the only one available to jam, so we jammed with him, and it was great. It was great fun just to be able to meet new people, because we were in first year, as well, so I didn’t know anyone at all, so I was just trying to make friends.”

With Kelly on guitar and vocals, Oisin on lead guitar, and Joshua on drums, the band was capped off when Luan James Geary joined on bass. When the four jammed, an organically gazey sound resulted, with the pop melodies of Kelly’s solo material layered below a medley of dreamy effects.

“I had songs before the band,” Kelly says of how their sound formed. “And we kind of used to jam on them a lot, and jam on riffs that we’d come up with there, because it was very just for fun. Like, we didn’t actually call ourselves a band until a couple of months in. So, it was very loose. It was very just for fun. So, we weren’t really developing a sound.”

The more they practised, the more they wanted to release material. “I think we just wanted to put music to our name, online,” Kelly explains. “We wanted to put out these songs, just so we’d have something.” But they needed a name.

“I wrote the song ‘Merricat’ before we even had a name for the band. So, that’s where it came from,” Kelly says of their name. “I was talking to Josh about it; I was telling him, ‘Oh, I wrote this new song! It’s about this character in a book I’m reading!’ [Laughs]

“It’s the name of a character in the book We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. I did finish the book, but I wrote the song before I finished it, and I kind of took the story and I made it into a new story and created my own ending for it, if that makes sense. I didn’t know how it ended, so I was like, ‘Well, I might just write my own ending!’

“The character turned out to be not a great person, so I don’t know how good it is! [Laughs] […] At the start, it was kind of like, ‘Ah, it’s a placeholder. We’ll call ourselves that for now, and we’ll figure something out,’ and then we were getting gigs and we had to give our name, and, every time, we’d just give Merricat. [Laughs] So, it just ended up sticking, and then they’re like, ‘You know what? I actually do like it!’, and I was like, ‘Well, I’ve always liked it!’”

Despite only starting properly at the beginning of 2025, by that June, the band had released their first single, “Ladylike,” which was an old song from Kelly’s solo stint that they repurposed, and a month later, they dropped the band’s namesake.

Around this time, their bassist, Luan, was unable to stick with the project. Fortunately, they had just met somebody who could take his place: Kai Malone. “Luan went away, so there was a period of time where we didn’t have any bassist,” Kelly remembers.

“And it kind of just clicked with Kai. And that’s when we started developing our sound into something different.” After the release of their first two singles, Merricat began focusing on their debut EP, which, despite having sonic consistency with their first two releases, would change drastically in tone and atmosphere.

“I feel like they’re a lot more evil,” laughs Kelly when describing how their EP’s songs differ from their first two singles. “Every time I bring a song idea, they’re all like, ‘It’s so evil! I love it!’ […] That’s how I describe the two new songs [‘springfield glen’ and ‘merrow’]; I’d describe them as melancholy.

“That’s how I’d describe the EP, to be honest. It’s very eerie, melancholy, and just dreamy all in one, I’d say. One of the songs is a little bit different; it’s not as eerie, but it’s still a little bit of evil. Evil is interesting, I think. Evil sounds interesting.”
Merricat’s debut EP (which, at time of publication, has not had its title announced) is expected to be released early next month, and two songs off it – “springfield glen” and “merrow” – are available on streaming services now.

To celebrate the release of the EP, Merricat will be headlining a launch gig at The Workman’s Club on April 8^th. This will kick off a year of performing and touring, and, at the time of publication, the band already have four dates listed.

After the EP, performing live will be Merricat’s primary objective for 2026. “Most of these bands, their live sets are so good, and you’re just thinking, ‘Why don’t you have anything on Spotify?! What’s going on?!’,” Kelly says.

“So, I feel like we took a very different approach. Releasing music, we found that to be more important than our live set, and I think that kind of hindered us a little bit. We’ve established that after we finish the EP, that’s going to be it for a while, because we want to work on our live set.

“I feel like we have a lot of room to improve on our live set, to make it more of a performance, so that’s why we have a lot of gigs lined up right now, because we’re taking anything really, because I think we need the practice and need to work on that, right now.”

Merricat’s debut EP is expected to launch next month. You can keep up with the band through their Linktree.

You can see Merricat live at:
April 8^th – Dublin – EP Launch @ The Workman’s Club (w/ Epilogue, Skyless, and Tommyguns)

April 10^th – Dublin – Anseo (supporting Bold Boy. w/ Factor 50)
 
April 13th – Dublin – The Grand Social (supporting Holy Show. w/ J4ded, and Picture Postcard)

May 28th – Dublin – Upstairs at Whelan’s (supporting Silk. w/ Skyless)

Tune into POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews… tonight at 22:30 (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.