Abbie Lee joins the Sound Signature Party at The Savoy

Sat, 09 May, 2026 - 13:01

“It was a big realisation for me that it’s good to do it rather than sit there and think about it because you don’t know what the outcome could be, and I would never have expected that.”

When Hollymount singer Abbie Lee posted a recording of her singing over an instrumental version of the Kerri Chandler track on her Instagram she never imagined that anything would come of it, even though she tagged him on it. However, it inspired the New Jersey underground house music legend to re-release the track, Let It, with her vocal as Let It (Give Me Back My Love) in part 3 of his Lost & Found series of EPs in 2024.

“I write my own lyrics,” she explains, “and one day I was writing away in my room, just freestyling over stuff, and I came across one of his instrumentals up on YouTube. I wrote lyrics over it and posted it on my Instagram story and just tagged him and he saw it and liked it. So he wanted to make a version of it, renew it, basically.”

Chandler got in touch with Lee to compliment her for her take on the track.

“I remember him saying he loved the rawness of my voice and just the spin I did on it. Like the lyrics to the original tune are more minimal, and I brought more of a storytelling vibe to my spin on it.”

Chandler was surprised to discover that Lee was from Cork, but even more amazed to learn that Downtown’s Stevie G, whom he had known back from the Sir Henry’s era, was a champion of the singer. When Chandler next deejayed in Cork, in March 2024, he invited her up onstage to perform live vocals over an instrumental version of the track.

“It was an unreal moment,” she relates. “I had grown up listening to him. To be onstage with him was surreal. It was a dream come through. It just gave me real motivation to just keep pushing forward. And just keep doing and keep putting things out there. Put myself out there because I was afraid of that a long time. I still am sometimes, but you have to push yourself because you can be the only one keeping yourself back.”

While Stevie G had been helping her to record tracks, and some of those are on Spotify, he also put her in contact with West Cork house producer Shane Breen. The two met and clicked, bonding over artists like Donna Summer and Erykah Badu, and more particularly electronic artists like Moodymann and Theo Parrish.

“And then a few months down the line we started on music together and we were like, c’mere, we have to actually do something proper with this,” says Lee. “The two of us are so funny. Like to get the two of us to sit down to do it is another thing, but then once we do we really do work well together.”

The pair have been working on and off on tracks over the past year, and Lee believes it’s a departure from the soulful house pop tracks she has released to date and it has also encouraged her to explore a deeper lyric writing.

“I would say there’s definitely a bit of a moody sound, deep, electronic,” she describes. “I think that’s what draws me to it as well because it’s very different to any of my original tunes that I have out, which is something I want to do anyway. I want to try different things. It’s kind of hard to describe it, wonky almost at times.”