Dork’s Hype List is our annual spotlight on the artists who’ve started to really stand out - not because they’re destined for instant superstardom, but because there’s something in what they’re doing that feels fresh, deliberate and worth keeping close tabs on.
It isn’t about calling winners or demanding overnight breakthroughs. Consider it a guide to the acts shaping the edges of what’s next: the ones we’re excited about, curious about, and confident enough to back as they take their next steps.
Their highlight, though? “We got tans!” says guitarist and vocalist Jimmy Bradbury with a note of pride. “We are not a band that tans,” clarifies bassist and vocalist Aoife O’Connell. “Maybe it was just the All Points East dust?”
It’s no surprise that the band suffered sun damage and/or semi-permanent dirt tans, with the summer seeing them play more festivals than you can shake a stick at. All Points East, Truck, Glastonbury, Latitude, Dot to Dot, four separate shows at The Great Escape – if you went to a festival this year, chances are that Westside Cowboy were clambering onto a stage somewhere in the vicinity.
“End of the Road was really great,” says guitarist and vocalist Reuben Haycocks. “We weren’t that great, but we really enjoyed it. We came off stage thinking it had gone brilliantly and then we watched some videos and… maybe not so much.” He laughs. “We got away with it, I think.”
“We’d just sort of lost our minds,” says Aoife. “It was the golden slot where not all the stages are open yet, everyone is still excited, it hadn’t started chucking it down with rain. So we got most people who were at the festival, which was pretty insane. I think it was genuinely in the thousands!”
“Green Man was great too,” adds Jimmy. “We had our first babies in the crowd. The parents of one of them told us he’d been really quiet all weekend, and apparently, during our set, he was babbling away and grinning the whole time. So we’ve found our target audience, I guess.”
"We’re in the market for some pyrotechnics for when we play Scala"
“It’s been crazy,” acknowledges Reuben. “But I don’t think people expect us to give the most polished gig of all time – especially not if they’ve seen us before! I feel like the people coming to see us appreciate that imperfect live experience, which helps us not to feel humongous pressure with it. Everyone who has spoken to us at shows has been lovely as well.”
“We’ve not actually done many headline shows either,” says Aoife. “So many of our gigs have been festivals or support slots. Our November tour is our first-ever headline tour, which is a real shift.”
“We’ll have to play for longer than half an hour for a start!” says drummer Paddy, to laughs from the rest of the band. “I’m looking forward to the headlines as well because we’ll finally find out who our fans are. We’ve been so lucky to meet people who like our music, but we’re not massively sure who our ‘fans’ are, because it’s never usually us headlining.”
Not ones for half-measures, that November tour is pretty swiftly followed by a bigger January jaunt, taking place after the release of the band’s second EP ‘So Much Country ‘Till We Get There’ and marking some of the biggest stages Westside Cowboy will have played when not warming up for somebody else.
“We’re in the market for some pyrotechnics for when we play Scala,” jokes Reuben. “The budget is pretty much non-existent, though, so we might have to get creative. I don’t think any of us have thought about the set in January, to be honest. I think we’re trying to attack the thing that is directly in front of us, and then we’ll see when we get there. By then, we’ll have two EPs out, and we’ll probably want to be playing songs that will inevitably go on the album. So I think we’re just excited to see how it changes as we go. I hope that it changes for the better, but it may well change for the worse, and that’s why you should come and watch us as soon as you can.
“So far, we’ve been doing the half hour of power,” he continues. “Our tour manager had to sit us down and explain that now that people are buying tickets and actually want to see us play, we need to be on stage for more than 25 minutes. I don’t know whether our music was made to be played for longer than half an hour – even if we do 20 songs, we’ll probably play them faster and faster until they take 30 minutes to get through.”
“But if you work out the price per song, it’ll be very reasonable,” grins Aoife.
"Springsteen, if you’re reading this, please take us on tour"
“We were so much more country when we started,” says Aoife. “And we still love all of those bands and people like MJ Lenderman who are taking that sound to new places, but I don’t really think that if we started now and didn’t have Cowboy in our name, people would be making that link.”
“There’s definitely a lot happening in that world right now, and we love a load of that music,” agrees Paddy. “And it influenced us when we were starting out, but we like so much different music that we aren’t limited to that one place. All of what we love comes from the same ethos and is cut from the same cloth of wanting to make really good, accessible music.”
“For a long time, bands went with this sleazy aesthetic,” says Aoife. “Sometimes that overlaps into actual attitudes and politics, but now there’s a lot of pushback against that. People are more politically minded, more community-minded, but everyone’s making wildly different music. I’ve met so many bands recently who are hard workers but also genuinely caring and conscious people.”
Resisting attempts to pigeonhole their sound is a problem usually encountered by bands further into their career than Westside Cowboy, but such is the rocket of hype which has been strapped to their trajectory. Regardless, broadening their sonic palette with each new release, the band’s debut album is likely to be something genuinely special when it arrives. “We’re actually scrapping the album and doing a book,” jokes Paddy. “No, no, we’re going to record the debut next year. It’s mostly written, but because we’ve been gigging so much, we’re looking forward to just taking a week or so to flesh everything out properly and put some microphones in front of it. We’re all really excited by having some more songs to play with.”
One more thing to tick off the bucket list, then. A concept more than just metaphorical for a group who sit down each year to write a list of dream accomplishments for the year ahead. Or so we were led to believe ahead of this interview, but upon asking them what’s on next year’s list, it turns out… they haven’t written it yet.
“We can do it now!” promises Reuben, counting things off on his fingers. “Ok, we want to make an album that we like, we want to exercise a bit more, we want to do more gigs for No Band Is An Island, which is a charity initiative that we’ve been involved in. Oh, and one we have on there every year – we want to support The Boss. Springsteen, if you’re reading this, please take us on tour.” ■
Taken from the December 2025 / January 2026 issue of Dork, out now.
