Last week Una Mullally gave a run-down of her top 11 acts to watch out for at this year’s Forbidden Fruit Festival at Dublin’s IMMA. Myself and the misses headed along on the Sunday, and the highlights for me were Grimes and Kool Thing. (Thanks, Una!)

So let’s take a look and listen. I’ll start with Kool Thing. (Sorry, Ms Boucher: the Irishers take precedence!)

KOOL THING

The Lighthouse Tent on Sunday at 3:45pm was where all the Forbidden Fruit queer girls were, watching Kool Thing. Who were fantastic. I was looking forward to this set, having heard about the band a while back, but missed them at the recent Camden Crawl in Dublin.

Well, not this time!

The Berlin-based, Dublin/Sydney-originating, Paris-meeting duo, Julie Chance and Jon Dark, were amazing, and got us all shoegazing before you could say “guitar and synth”. (Also, whoever they got to do drums: keep him!)

Last year, they played a DJ set at Mother, and earlier this year, they released their Light Games EP, which Nialler highlighted and which is free to download. It features three tracks: “Light Games”, “This Is The Place” and “The Sign”.

” onclick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview (‘/outbound/vimeo.com’);”>Kool Thing – Light Games [official video] from ntfuture” onclick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview (‘/outbound/vimeo.com’);”>Claire Kurylowski on Vimeo.

GRIMES

As far as I’m concerned, to pack out a tent at 3:15pm on a cold, dreary, rainy, windy Sunday is not only an achievement, but a testament to the performer. And here are two examples of why hundreds of hipsters stuffed themselves into the Undergrowth Tent to listen to Grimes:

She’s only a wee thing, really, at the age of just 24, yet Grimes – another Canadian musical pixie – already has three albums to her name. She recently signed with record label, 4AD, and subsequently released the third album, Visions.

Added bonus: She recently created a line of vagina rings. It’s true.