Fontaines D.C. are finally coming to Belgrade. After nearly a decade of building one of the most compelling catalogs in modern guitar music, the Irish post-punk band will perform in Belgrade for the first time on June 25, 2025. The show will take place at Luka Beograd, an industrial riverside venue that feels custom-built for their brand of poetic noise and raw catharsis. The performance is part of the band’s Europe Summer 2025 tour, and Charm Music Serbia organises the concert.

Formed in Dublin in 2014, the band – comprising Grian Chatten (vocals), Carlos O’Connell (guitar), Conor Curley (guitar), Conor Deegan III (bass), and Tom Coll (drums) – first came together through a shared love of literature and rhythm. Their breakthrough debut, Dogrel (2019), an homage to working-class Irish poetry, set a tone of street-level poetry and post-punk minimalism, earning widespread acclaim and a Mercury Prize nomination. Each subsequent release – A Hero’s Death (2020) and Skinty Fia (2022) – pushed further into murky territory: surrealist lyrics, diaspora disillusionment. Skinty Fia topped the charts in the UK and Ireland and won a BRIT Award for Best International Group.

A New Era with Romance

The band’s fourth album, Romance, dropped in August 2024 via XL Recordings and was produced by James Ford, marking a striking departure from the gritty realism. It trades the concrete-and-cigarette realism of earlier records for something more dreamlike and cinematic. The album has been met with critical acclaim. Lead single “Starburster” was a curveball: distorted and undeniably addictive. It landed them their first Grammy nomination and became their highest-charting song to date.

YT – Fontaines D.C. – Starburster (Official Video)

But for all the sonic detours, the heart of the band hasn’t changed. Grian Chatten still delivers every lyric like it might be his last. The band still knows how to twist tension into beauty. While still rooted in emotional intensity, Romance plays with fantasy, dislocation, and the surreal, blending trip-hop textures, distorted rap cadences, and ambient haze. In a recent interview, bassist Conor Deegan said:
“We’re always just searching for a sound that feels true to where we are. With Romance, we wanted to explore the tension between love and identity, and what gets lost in between.”

Despite the shift in production and palette, Fontaines D.C. remains an arresting live act, delivering shows that fuse intensity with intimacy. Their recent European sets have featured an expansive mix of old and new material, drawing on the visceral energy of Dogrel and the spectral beauty of Romance in equal measure.

What to Expect in Belgrade

This will be Fontaines D.C.’s first-ever show in Serbia, and Luka Beograd, with its raw open-air architecture, offers a fitting atmosphere for the occasion. The band’s performance is expected to begin around 21:00. Even though it was announced that the support band would be British band Jadu Heart, the band will be welcomed on stage with local support Belgrade-based band KOIKOI – unburdened by genres, they playfully select the most vivid elements from rock, post-punk, and pop, combining them with electronics and male-female polyphonic vocals. Since their debut album Pozivi u stranu (Calls Aside), KOIKOI has won over audiences with powerful performances and earned numerous opportunities to present themselves to European audiences.