Eleven years in the making, Kate Nashs sixth studio album Cailn is a love letter to her Irish heritage. Produced by KoOoLkOjAk and recorded on the west coast of Ireland at Stiideo Cuan, under the watchful eye of pioneering trad musician Charlie Lennon, Cailn is a raw, raucous album combining traditional Irish sounds with punk energy, nods to hip hop production and Nashs knack for a killer hook.

This was my first music, says Nash, who grew up in an Irish community in North Harrow, where she attended a Catholic school. When visiting her mothers loving, vibrant Irish family in Ireland every summer, she found that music infused the fabric of life in a way that felt natural and instinctive. All my earliest musical memories were in Ireland: live music in the pub, going to Sharon Shannon gigs, seeing the best accordion player youve ever seen and its a bored-looking eight-year-old boy in a puffer jacket. Theres a real respect for musicians.

Marrying punk protest songs with a joyful celebration of trad music, Cailn explores themes of colonialism, inequality, religion, internalised shame and forgiveness and family, drawing on the rich texture of Irish folklore and mythology. The tradition of strong Irish women is at the heart of the record, from the young girls celebrated on the 90s grunge eyeroll of title track Cailn, to the resourceful single mother navigating the housing crisis in Pg Mo Thin (Theres all these politicians arguing with each other on news programmes, then you cut to peoples real life and its like, cant you just fucking help them?), to Nashs grandmother, memorialised in the poignant yet joyful Irish Saints.