Dermot Henry

Dermot Henry at Zebulon

Dermot Henry

Wiltshire-born singer-songwriter Dermot Henry makes music that feels less written than discovered—songs plucked from somewhere just beneath conscious thought. His debut EP, Aiming Torches at the Sun, is built from friends'stories, dreams, and hallucinations alongside flashes of raw autobiography, all delivered with an honesty that belies his 22 years.

Raised on his parents'Beatles and Tom Waits records before the obligatory Arctic Monkeys phase, Henry found his true voice at university through Elliott Smith and Big Thief's Adrianne Lenker. Their music cracked something open: "I didn't realise until then that you could just say what you mean in a song. You don't have to be clever about it."

A year abroad in Paris proved formative—busking on the streets, he stumbled into a bar where a stranger was fumbling the lyrics to Elizabeth Cotton's "Freight Train." Henry jumped in to help, found a musical partner, and says he "really found my feet as a songwriter there."

Working with producer Dom Monks (Big Thief, Laura Marling, Michael Kiwanuka), Henry learned to resist the urge toward polish, instead embracing imperfection as the source of his music's charm. The result is instrumentally sparse, emotionally direct folk that grapples with growing up, love without physical closeness, and the strangeness of existing at all—rendered with equal parts absurdist humor and tenderness.

What makes Henry special is this unguarded quality: songs that sound timeless rather than trendy, arriving just as listeners tire of digital overload and crave something real. He's not chasing cool—he's chasing truth, and building the kind of scene he's always wanted to belong to.