Kingfishr singer Eddie Keogh has likened the chorus from the band's hit track Killeagh to the viral children's song Baby Shark, and said it's been "mad" to see it become "kind of an anthem".
The song went to No 1 in Ireland in May, while the band's debut album, Halcyon, went straight to Number 1 on the Irish Album Charts in August.
Killeagh, which is the most-streamed song on Spotify in Ireland for the year, has since returned to the top slot twice, including for eight weeks in a row, and both the song and Halcyon are the Christmas No 1 in Ireland.
Kingfishr: 'We feel like we've grown up in public'
Speaking to Rachael English on RTÉ Radio 1's News At One programme, Keogh reflected on the origins of the band's massive 2025 hit.
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"As all good stories do, it started in the pub," Keogh recalled. "Our guitarist Fitz (Eoin Fitzgibbon) is from Killeagh [in Co Cork] and played for the club for years and years, and his family are heavily involved in it.
"He ran into a lad when he was down home, Yank, and yer man was badgering him, saying, 'We've no song for the club and the junior team were doing well'.
"[Eoin] said if the lads make it to the final we'll write a song. The boys made it to the final and we were in the studio anyway. Fitz was getting calls from Yank left right and centre, and he was saying. 'This lad won't leave me alone, we'll have to do something for them'.
"We had half an hour spare so we put something together. We sat down and I said, 'What are the things in Killeagh?' He said, 'There's a river, there's a woods, there's a pub and there's a GAA pitch'. I said, 'We'll fire those down and figure it out from there'.
"There was no intention or grand scheme of what we wanted to do with it. It was a favour for one of Fitz's friends, basically."
"With songs that end up going places, you hear that they kind of just happen," he continued. "We've written an awful lot of music that, thank god, will never see the light of day. We find that the quicker something comes out of you, generally the better it is, because it's more free."
The band realised that something unusual was happening with the song over St Patrick's weekend.
"There was a bit of hemming and hawing about whether we should release it, because Fitz said, 'This is just about my club'. He wasn't too excited about it. I did think it had something, but obviously you have no idea this would happen," he recalled.
"On Paddy's weekend people started using it on TikTok and then it just started to snowball. I think it was that perfect storm for the whole summer then. It became kind of an anthem, it was mad to watch it."
Keogh said he isn't able to explain Killeagh's widespread popularity.
"That's the magic of it I suppose," he said. "I think it's the small stories that people see the most of themselves in.
"When we started the band we wanted to write these big grand tunes and cinematic stuff, but we found it's the stories that's closest to us that people really want to hear about.
"The population of Killeagh is about 600. There's something really poetic about that, about finding an anthem in such a small place."
Keogh added: "I always think of it as like a Baby Shark. When we were singing the chorus in the studio, I was like even a child could [sing] Killeagh - it doesn't get much simpler than that."
The band closed out the year with a surprise appearance on The Late Late Toy Show and they are set to play the second of two sold-out shows at Dublin's 3Arena on Friday night. Australia and the US are among the band's touring destinations for 2026.
"Things are happening around us that we don't even have a grasp on," he said. "When you're out touring and playing gigs you don't have a quiet minute to reflect on the whole thing. I'm sure in the next couple of weeks when we're sitting down at Christmas we'll have more of a handle on what's gone on."
As for the band's success, he attributed it to "right place, right time".
"Luck definitely plays a huge amount in all of this. As my father says, 'Just ride the wave'. There's no stopping us!"
