Irish rap trio Kneecap have announced their official debut album, Fine Art, which will be out June 14 via Heavenly Recordings. The group, who rap in a mix of Irish and English, made it with producer Toddla T, and it features contributions from Lankum’s Radie Peat, Grian Chatten of Fontaines D.C. and Jelani Blackman.

Fine Art doubles as Kneecap’s origin story, which they’ve set in a fictitious pub. Says the group’s Mo Chara, “When we got into the studio with Toddla T, we scrapped every song we had and started from complete scratch. T’s idea was to tell the story of Kneecap. So the record was conceived as the listener stepping into Kneecap’s world. That’s where the idea came to set whole thing in a pub. You walk into a pub at the start, there’s someone offering you a drink, there’s a singsong… really, it’s us taking you by the hand and leading you into our world.”

“We’re Irish speakers living in an urban area, the first or second generation to be born in the city,” Chara says of Kneecap’s distinctive Irish/English flow. “Traditionally it’s a rural language after colonialism pushed it out west towards the sea. We wanted to bring the Irish language into the modern era by incorporating aspects of youth culture into it. There’s a different lifestyle in the city to rural areas. There were no words for drugs in the Irish language so we had to invent them. We’d recycle old words and apply them to modern things. That’s part of the world we want to create, where the Irish language is central and it’s modern.”

Adds Móglaí Bap, “The beauty of Kneecap is that we not only piss off people from the Unionist background, we also piss off people from the Irish community.. We don’t discriminate who we piss off. There’s conservative people in the Irish language community who think that the language should be sustained as an ancient language in all its beauty. They think we’re ruining the language with the words we’re using. But you start to hear young people using some of the words we use in our songs, referring to drugs or party life. That feels like we’re having a positive effect on youth culture.”

The album includes last year’s single “Better Way To Live” featuring Grian Chatten, and the new single is “Sick in the Head.” Says Mo Chara, “When working on the album we had periods of great productivity but also periods with a total lack of anything creatively. Towards the end of recording we hit a proper wall and this is the result. Our mental health was being tested and we said f*ck it if we’re doomed to mental torture we want to have some money to get through it. We’ve had enough of it while being broke round Belfast.” You can watch the video for it and “Better Way to Live” below.

Kneecap will be on tour in North America with Heavenly labelmates Revival Season this spring following their appearance at SXSW, including a show at Brooklyn’s Warsaw on March 23. All dates are listed below.

For another type of origin story, there’s the Kneecap movie, where Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap and DJ Próva all play themselves. Directed with tons of style by Rich Peppiatt, Kneecap plays like a cross between Trainspotting, Eight Mile and 24 Hour Party People and the band more than hold their own onscreen along established actors in the cast, including Michael Fassbender. The film premiered at Sundance 2024 where it won the Audience Award in the NEXT lineup and was aquired by Sony Pictures. No release date has been announced yet.

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FINE ART
1. 3CAG (ft. Radie Peat)
2. Fine Art
3. Ibh Fiacha Linne
4. I’m Flush
5. Better Way To Live (ft. Grian Chatten)
6. Sick In The Head
7. Love Making
8. Drug Dealin Pagans
9. Harrow Road (ft. Jelani Blackman)
10. Parful
11. Rhino Ket
12. Way Too Much

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Kneecap – 2024 Tour Dates
Mar 13-15 – SXSW, Austin, TX
Mar 17 – MGM Music Hall, Boston, MA (w/ Dropkick Murphys)
Mar 18 – Foundry, Philadelphia, PA (w/ Revival Season) – SOLD OUT
Mar 21 – Axis Club, Toronto, ON (w/ Revival Season)
Mar 23 – Warsaw, Brooklyn, NY (w/ Revival Season) – SOLD OUT
Mar 26 – Biltmore Cabaret, Vancouver, BC (w/ Revival Season) – SOLD OUT
Mar 27 – Biltmore Cabaret, Vancouver, BC (w/ Revival Season)
Mar 28 – Neumos, Seattle, WA (w/ Revival Season)
Mar 30 – New Parish, Oakland, CA (w/ Revival Season)
Apr 02 – Voodoo Room, San Diego, CA (w/ Revival Season)
Apr 04 – Echoplex, Los Angeles, CA (w/ Revival Season)
Jun 15 – Bergenfest, Bergen, NO
Jul 05 – Rock Werchter, Werchter, BE
Jul 11 – Mad Cool Festival, Madrid, ES
Jul 13 – Bitterzoet, Amsterdam, NE
Jul 18 – Heineken Big Top, Galway, IE
Jul 20 – Super Bock Festival, Lisbon, PT
Aug 24-25 – Reading & Leeds Festival, UK
Nov 14 – Foundry, Sheffield, UK
Nov 15 – New Century Hall, Manchester, UK
Nov 16 – Barrowlands, Glasgow, UK
Nov 19 – Rock City, Nottingham, UK
Nov 20 – SXW, Bristol, UK
Nov 21 – The Forum, London, UK