Belfast Folk Artist Good Swim – Shares New Single ‘A Mark On You’

Belfast folk artist Good Swim today shares resonant new single ‘A Mark On You’.

After a twelve-year hiatus from recording, Belfast native Dave McConnell returned to the studio in 2025 with no grand plans – just one song that needed to exist. What began as a single session with producer Michael Bell at Start Together Studios quickly expanded into a project that needed to grow, and Good Swim was born.

Releasing debut single ‘Paper Tiger’ in January, Good Swim has since rippled across Northern Ireland’s folk scene, quietly amassing over 40,000 streams across just four singles.

The bloodline of the project runs through the confessional folk of Bright Eyes and Damien Rice and through the dust bowl Americana of Wilco, resulting in music made for the most intimate of moments, navigating love, fear, yearning and everything in between.

Drawing deeply from the lives and stories unfolding around him, McConnell’s songwriting is rooted in human relationships and the moments that define them. New release, ‘A Mark On You’, continues to unravel this universally resonant thread, exploring our instinct to outrun the past. Good Swim explains:

“Sometimes big-crazy-life-changing things happen, and those things end up controlling us. Changing how we think, how we act and how we feel. That’s the mark. The chorus speaks to that a bit. There was a pretty long journey I had to go on to not have a lot of hate in my heart about things that have happened to me. I’m maybe still walking on that road, it’s a constant thing.”

At its core, the single examines how trauma can quietly shape the way we think, act and move through the world. The first verse explores the harm that can be done in the name of faith, telling the story of a trans youth leaving home because it no longer feels like a place where they can stay: “I felt like it was the perfect example of the most natural thing — a parent’s love — being subverted in the name of something people believe in”.

While rooted in that narrative, the song is also threaded with reflections on McConnell’s own experiences, shaped in part by the emotional fallout of his life-changing health journey.

By the bridge, the song arrives at a place of hard-won acceptance. McConnell comes to the difficult realisation that, in some situations, no one is coming to save you; emotional healing is born from finding the strength to pull yourself forward.

Featuring Joel Harkin on pedal steel and Chris McCorry on electric guitar, the song’s delicate, comforting arrangement offers a striking counterpoint to its vulnerable subject matter, underscoring the emotional weight of the release and its stark beauty.

Confronting the challenge of carrying the past without letting it define the journey ahead, Good Swim delivers another intensely honest and empathetic statement.