MacD on Music: Sleeping Beauty

Many years ago, a married couple played in a band together before breaking away to form their own group and forging their own identity. I am, of course, talking about Tom Tom Club, the group started by Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads.

This week, I’m chatting with a group that could be considered their Derry equivalent, Beauty Sleep, made up of husband and wife Cheylene Murphy and Ryan McGroarty, both formally of Wonder Villains, and who have just released their second album ‘The Whole Damn Cake’.

Beauty Sleep “serve up a maximalist blend of bewitching synth-pop and guitar-driven indie rock that’s sure to set your heart racing. Their lavish soundscapes and dizzying songwriting have drawn comparisons to New Order, St Vincent and Japanese Breakfast, so far achieving over a million streams and performing at festivals including SXSW, Electric Picnic and Other Voices”.

I caught up with Cheylene and Ryan recently to discuss the album and the history of the group. Ryan: “Cheylene and myself are both from Derry. We grew up there and got playing in lots of bands, going to the Nerve Centre, all the underage gigs of the era, and we met properly when I joined Cheylene’s band Wonder Villains years ago and that’s how we met.

"We had an amazing time in that band, releasing our first record together, and at the end of their lifespan we decided we wanted to make something a bit reflective of the ideas in our own heads, production ideas we wanted to chase and putting on our big, brave pants and both being lead singers for the first time.”

Talking about the making of ‘The Whole Damn Cake’, Cheylene tells me: “The last record we had was out in 2019. With this project we write a lot about our own lives, and we wanted to be very honest and reflect who we are and how we view the world. Our first record was called ‘Be Kind’ which was really about us figuring out how to deal with our own mental health and be a bit more honest and grown up a bit. With the second record we wanted to further this story along and early on I’d painted on a canvas the words ‘Radical Happiness’ and we were seeing if we could figure out how to be radically happy for ourselves, because we felt quite far away from that.

"We didn’t want to keep writing songs about being sad and not progressing. We were like ‘We need to move this story along’, so we had to live that, and we did a lot of things that helped us feel like we could take ownership over our own lives and embrace all the great things life has to offer. I think a lot of that is just taking accountability for skilling up and figuring things out on your own terms and doing it the way you want to without waiting around for someone else, and also having a lot of fun.

"We went to festivals, we got married, we built a studio and all these really fun things, so we wrote songs along that journey. It took us a long time because we had to do a lot of stuff to write songs about it, that’s why we call it ‘The Whole Damn Cake’, because I think at the end it was just us embracing being a bit too much. That’s what the takeaway was. People keep trying to put us in a box and make us smaller, and what if we were just too much and that was brilliant, so that was the theme.”

READ MORE: MacD on Music

And that’s it from Beauty Sleep. Their second album ‘The Whole Damn Cake’ is out now.

Now, onto other business. Last Friday saw the release of the latest single from Belfast-based Ria Timkin. Her new single ‘Our Time’ “explores the feeling of an absolute trust that your time will come, no matter how long the road or how heavy the doubt. Moreover, it encompasses that steadfast belief that you will not do it alone-that the right people will stay and stand by your side.” It’s available now on all good streaming platforms.

Next, we move about as far south as you can go without leaving the country with Cork singer/songwriter How I Became A Wave, who’s new single ‘05:00’ [pronounced 5am] will be released tomorrow (25th November). How I Became A Wave is led by Cork songwriter Pat Carey and comprises “a collective of Ireland’s finest musicians” for “one of the most compelling musical project” in the country today.

MacD on Music: Band of Brothers

Ferdia Walsh-Peelo of the Fynches chats ahead of their upcoming gig in Sandino’s

Irish trad supergroup BIIRD announces debut Derry show at Nerve Centre

BIIRD will be performing at Nerve Centre in Derry on Friday, May 1, 2026

Finally, this Friday (28th November) sees the return of the Foyle Folk Club in Tinney’s, this time featuring Declan McLaughlin (who’s new album ‘Shadows’ is available now in Cool Discs) & the Hi Flats, Bernie Doherty, Acoustic Vibes (whose debut album ‘Chasing the Light’ is also available now in Cool Discs) plus very special surprise guests. Admission is £5 and doors are at 8.30 with music starting at 9pm sharp.

Finally, time for the socials. More information on the Foyle Folk Club can be found on Facebook. How I Became A Wave can be found on Instagram @howibecameawave, Ria Timkin @riatimkin and Beauty Sleep @beautysleeptheband.