Thankfully, that has changed across the world with bands including The Gossip, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, CSS, New Young Pony Club, The Knife, Arcade Fire, and Bonde Du Role displaying a strong female presence. In Ireland, it's no different. The future of Irish indie and the best bands in the country happen to have a strong female presence.

This is not about 'chicks in rock, ' nor is it about tokenism. This is about the normalisation of female artistry in a scene that was previously male-dominated and, to a point, sexist. And, namely, this is about the music.

On a Saturday night in Whelan's on Wexford Street, everything is going off. The floor is packed, so is the bar, so is the balcony upstairs. And onstage, Ham Sandwich are playing the gig of their lives. At the front of the band, Niamh grins every time a song is met with cheers and the lyrics sung back at her. The band from Kells are rocking out, blasting their eccentric dirty pop to the willing crowd. During the final song, silver confetti falls from the ceiling, and it's just one of those nights where everything aligns to make it the perfect gig.

Upstairs in the band's drinking room, well wishers come and go, hugging the band members.

Later, Niamh will find it difficult to dance in the packed venue because every few minutes, she is met by a fan who kisses her hand and hurls platitudes and gratitudes. She admits that she'll find it hard to go back to work in the stock room of BT2 in Dundrum Shopping Centre.

Then it's Tuesday night in the cavernous upstairs pool room of the Camden Hotel, a few doors down from Whelan's. It's the launch of the Hard Working Class Heroes festival, and Fight Like Apes are headlining the party, a bit of a coup for a band with just one four-track EP. A few months ago, they were relatively unknown. Then a wave of bloggers heralded them as the future of Irish indie. The praise was so emphatic, so universal, that Irish Timesmusic writer and founder of the Choice Music Prize, Jim Carroll, joked that the band were a fictional creation of Irish music bloggers who invented a group to please all of their tastes.

MayKay, the force of nature who doubles as the band's lead singer and keyboardist is wrestling with a severe chest infection, but nevertheless belts out their tunes to cheers of those who had heard them before.

Those who haven't stand stunned. MayKay has one of the most distinctive and dexterous voices ever to inhabit an Irish body, maybe down to her asthma, switching from sweet melodies to demonic screeches seamlessly.

She comes of stage sweating and smiling, brushing her long black hair . . . the band's fifth member . . .back from her face.

Last week, Cap Pas Cap, a fascinating, extremely talented and intriguingly-skewed punk crew opened the first night of the High Five Club in Malmo, Sweden. They've just signed to a Japanese label . . . Klee/Rallye, which has Klaxons and Au Revoir Simone on their roster . . . who will release their sold out seven-inch record in August. Stagger Lee, a rock and roll foursome with songs like 'Misery River' that the NME described as "debauched bluesf explosive aggression" just released a single 'Bad Shoes' have played the Fringe Festival, and Ireland's first MySpace festival in the past year along with supporting The Kills, Sleater Kinney and The Long Blondes. These four bands represent the future of quality Irish music. They find their homes in clubs around the country like Antics @ Crawdaddy, Strange Brew @ Roisin Dubh, Maximum Joy @ Kennedy's and on the radio station Phantom.

"I hate that thing of 'a girl in a band' or whatever, " says Donna, the singer from Stagger Lee. Her voice sounds like Leadbelly stalking PJ Harvey. She's tattooed and honest and ranting.

"I think if you have an issue with a girl in a band, get over it, it's completely irrelevant. If you're playing rock and roll or anything that has life and energy to it, your music can be completely sexual without you having to be sexualised." Stagger Lee are affiliated with the Psychotic Reaction crew ("it seems to be a good place to be if you're mental, " a Dublin musician tells me) which includes more or less, The Things, The Mighty Stef, Humanzi, Mainline and their ilk.

Collectives like Psychotic Reaction have replaced any 'scene' which previously existed in Dublin. They involve club nights and record labels basically. Cap Pas Cap are involved with the Skinny Wolves team. Ham Sandwich and Fight Like Apes are a little less attached.

Grainne from Cap Pas Cap is softly spoken and slightly concerned about the premise of the article. She doesn't normally do interviews. Along with playing in this band, she's preparing herself for a PhD in a complicated sounding facet of mental health research. "I think it's a huge policy that people have believed for a long time: in order to be a female making strong music, you had to be presented as a female, which isn't what it's about at all. Other bands I've been in were quite catastrophic and not really productive. You need to talk about a more humanistic approach . . . not women, but musicians. That's what important, not the sex of people in your band, but the dynamic between those people."

At the photo shoot, she's the quietest. While MayKay and Niamh joke about a shoot they did for a music magazine where the photographer actually asked MayKay for "more ape, I need more ape, " and Donna switches clothes, Grainne kind of hangs in the background.

Cap Pas Cap formed in 2005, playing what Grainne describes as a disastrous first gig in the Lower Deck in Dublin. Since then, they've been on a steady incline supporting big visiting bands including The Gossip.

Their music is surreal, yelping, erratic and brilliant. It's also slightly mysterious. They're a serious band, with serious intentions. Luckily, they have the talent to back it up.

Niamh from Ham Sandwich returned from Glasgow to become the utterly unpretentious queen of the indie scene in Dublin, along with her best mate Jade. She's a delightful character with an astounding voice and stage presence, good humour and style. This band means a lot to her. "I remember when we played a gig at the end of last year and my Mum came and it was the first time she had seen me sing with the band and she was crying by the end of it.

She was like 'I didn't know you were so passionate'. She just knew. She just knew I was confident in what I was doing, and this is what I want to do."

Niamh confesses that she is worried about Fight Like Apes because they're so good. She tells me she drunkenly bombarded MayKay backstage at the indie club Antics in Crawdaddy one night with hugs and love and told her band to get out of Dublin and get big everywhere else. My jaw drops when I see MayKay's age on her MySpace page. She's 20.

Apart from the obvious surge of jealousy and the five-minute reevaluation of my life, it really does make her position more exciting. They played their first gig in November. Since then, a music PR company has jumped on board, as has a booking agent in London who has hooked them up with a network of agents around Europe. Best of all, the music is brilliant.

'Battlestations', from their debut EP is one of the best songs released by any band anywhere this year.

It's pretty clear that MayKay is some sort of star . . . along with being the wittiest musician I've ever encountered, leaving aside maybe Mark E Smith, maybe CRayz Walz.

"It's so mad. It's exciting. Even the tour we've been on recently.

We never planned to do a tour at all. Gigs kept coming in, we couldn't turn them down. Then England popped up and suddenly we hadn't been home in a month.

I never had time to get tired. If my throat got iffy, I didn't have time to worry about it, " she says, eating a gigantic sandwich.

"We've been lucky in the timing of the kind of stuff we're doing. I don't feel like I'm an authority on what we're doing because we haven't got anywhere concrete.

No one else is really doing what we're doing. Apparently we're new over in the UK as well."

The only dodgy obstacle they've faced so far is stern looks from MayKay's mother (Irish Times journalist Kathy Sheridan) when she announced she was dropping out of college to dedicate all of her time to the band. It was probably a wise decision.