Sprints

Few Irish guitar bands sound as urgent as Sprints, the Dublin quartet whose garage punk carries the scrape of grunge and the snap of a well-placed hook. Karla Chubb, who spent her early childhood in Düsseldorf before her family returned to Ireland, writes the songs, and her ear for cut-glass melody sits against bursts of noise-punk that Ed Power likened to tiptoeing into a stranger's diary. Chubb, Jack Callan and Colm O'Reilly have been making music together since they were ten, and that long friendship still shapes the band's current lineup of Chubb, Sam McCann, Callan and Zac Stephenson.

The band released a run of singles and EPs for the Nice Swan label between 2019 and 2022, starting with 'Pathetic' and 'The Cheek', before signing to City Slang. Their debut album, Letter to Self, arrived in January 2024 to widespread acclaim, and a spring tour took them across Europe, the US and the UK. They withdrew from a scheduled appearance at South by Southwest over the festival's ties to the US Army and RTX Corporation. Colm O'Reilly left in May 2024, and Stephenson later became a permanent member. Their second album, All That Is Over, was released on 26 September 2025.