With their ever-mutating brand of jazz-and-country-laced punk, Opus Kink have always cut a singular figure in a saturated landscape. Making their name with incendiary, cult-like live shows, the band - formed in Brighton (UK) in 2017 - have developed a sound as elusive as it is recognisable. Underscored by a formidable horn section and ragged, sardonic delivery, the band bear passing resemblance to post-punk and no-wave acts like The Pop Group, Birthday Party and Lounge Lizards, but it’s the weaving of older, more traditional influences - choral, folk, country, Latin, Weimar cabaret, cruise-ship-crooning - into the fabric of their music that sets them apart. Through their songs concerning violence, evil, shame, troubled sexual politics, anxiety and emptiness, all served with a wry absurdist bent, Opus Kink craft an alluring nether-world for their voracious audiences to plunge into.

They tore through the UK and Europe in the early years of the group and formed a reputation for intoxicating, otherworldly carnage - broken ribs, bloody microphones, shamanic ritual and even a ruptured spleen were part and parcel of their touring show - as well as a fierce loyalty to the DIY and grassroots venues and heroes they encountered. While the narrative and spiritual world of Opus Kink underwent constant evolution, the close relationships they fostered with underground music-world-denizens would inspire their philosophies and works along the way. Performances in Serbian abattoirs, stadium complexes in Istanbul, spur-of-the-moment DIY shows in Tyneside industrial estates and secret appearances crammed into the back of their local dive that quite literally brought the roof down - this adaptability and unconcern for career propriety carved out a place for Opus Kink in the hearts of rock’n’roll weirdos.

Monster Florence are a six member alternative Hip Hop band from Colchester, Essex. They are equal parts Hip Hop/Rap as they are musicianship and raw melodic production drawing on a multitude of genres such as Punk, Indie, Rap and Psychedelic Rock. 

They officially formed back in 2015 with their debut release EP, ‘The Groove’ and have gone on to release multiple singles, a studio album ‘Foul’, 2 EP’s including their debut release on Project Melody, ‘Cowboys and Idiots’ which included the lead single ‘Picture Frame’ featuring Miles Kane. In 2023 MoFlo as they are known by their fans, dropped their second studio album, ‘Master System’ which featured the singles, ‘Relax’ feat. John Cooper Clark, ‘Borstal’, ‘Midnight Club’, and ‘Spaceman’

London’s newest alternative outfit, Saint Clair - a four-piece blurring the lines between shoegaze and alt-rock. Written for the stage, each song is made to captivate audiences. Moody guitars, introspective lyrics, and a no-frills approach define a band unafraid to leave it all on stage.

Guy Ferris, Oscar Post, Matt Saunders and Ollie Thomas began Lemonsuckr. The band was incubated from the inside of “The Container” a metal, 8ft x 20ft, freight shipping unit you’d expect to see floating across the Atlantic on a cargo boat (this one however was safely marooned on a farm in the middle of nowhere). 

They themselves forged The Container into their den, studio and headquarters; a place they could conceptualise, rehearse and write music together.  What followed were countless hours locked away inside the tin can obsessing over the project, doors slammed shut.

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Lemonsuckr live performances are nothing short of chaos with a hot-bloodedness and confidence afforded only to a group of people who have spent so long understanding what they want an audience to feel,  from the immediate pounding and unrelenting beat to the last screech of feedback.

Shaking Hand are a Manchester trio who construct long slowburning post-rock in multiple tunings and time signatures, taking inspiration from modernist architecture, 90s US alternative and midwestern emo. The band’s musical DNA runs through experimental guitar outfits like Women, Slint, Sonic Youth, Pavement, and Ulrika Spacek, balanced with the melodic sensibility of Big Thief and the dynamic intimacy of Yo La Tengo.

Eve Appleton Band (or EAB) are a Bristol six-piece writing intricate post-rock and modern indie/prog-folk that moves from light folky textures into dense and expansive post-rock passages.

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Intimate songwriting found in the space between the 60s folk revival mixed and the scale and tension of modern post-rock.

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Green Man Rising 2023 winners, EAB opened the festival’s 12,000-capacity Mountain Stage and have since gone on to play sold out shows in Bristol and beyond and release two studio albums.

Their 2025 debut album “Bible Black” introduced that EAB sound and their follow up The Way Up Sky released in October 2026 is now bringing it further. 

Big Red - the solo writing vehicle of Joseph Scarisbrick - introduce themselves with their immediate and tense debut single “Isn’t He Funny?”. Originally conceived as a home for songs that sat outside the world of his other project, The Orchestra (For Now), the band has evolved into a three-piece alongside drummer Charlie Hancock and bassist/vocalist Millie Kirby.

With more music to be announced this year, the new single marks something of a new chapter for Scarisbrick. Where his previous work frequently relied on dense references and literary allusion across The Orchestra (For Now)’s Plan 75 and Plan 76, this new endeavour takes a more direct approach. The writing is confessional and brutally honest, the music stripped back and candid; a band playing together in real time.

foot foot have established themselves as one of the leading acts of Bristol’s underground, drawing on the traditions of folk, math-rock, & discordant post-rock to produce their intricate brand of songcraft, creating moments of serenity & stillness before launching into fast, jagged rhythms. Their use of contrasts

-indie-flecked songwriting with irregular, winding passages, or rich violin & vocal melodies with avante--jazz freakouts - have marked them out as one of the scene's most innovative & impactful live acts.

Their debut album “still waters, empty house,” recorded over 7 days in the basement of iconic music venue The Louisiana, produced by Jack Ogbourne (Bingo Fury, The Cindys) was

released in February 2025 to critical acclaim. The album consists of 7 songs that seek to encapsulate the process of discovering

one’s own unique voice. A breakup album at heart, foot foot navigates themes of isolation, unrequited love, and human nature

with lyrics that blossom and wilt upon a terrain of distorted guitars, lush violin, fragile vocals and whiplash inducing time signatures.

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Lifeloose is the brainchild of musicians Aldi Ho and Josie Silverman, who started making music together at sleepovers. The London group's self-titled debut single won heaps of plaudits, including airplay on BBC 6Music (Steve Lamacq, Emily Pilbeam, New Music Fix), Apple Music (Matt Wilkinson) and Radio X (John Kennedy), plus press nods from So Young, Stereogum, NME, The Line of Best Fit, Rough Trade, DIY, Still Listening, Hard of Hearing, Louder Than War, and more. 

There’s a distinct turbulence frothing in Manchester. Not the sideways forever-rain or the static hum of a post-industrial hangover, but something stranger, lither, and more evasive.

Enter MLEKO: a seven-piece. They twist, howl, and hold you over the edge with ever-so-slightly

clammy hands. Beauty crosscut with beast and a side of sincerity... lathered in levity.

The band — Ed Whirledge (vocals/guitar), Rory Baker (guitar), Tom Houston (sax), Charlotte

Nuta(trumpet), Myron Endean (bass), Ioan Saul (drums), and Bruno Evans (guitar/synth) —

describe their sound as ‘Gub Rock’, which, like all good made-up genres, is more of a shrug than a statement: “Gub Rock? – Who knows what kind of rock we make? It’s been termed post-punk, art rock, post-rock, alt rock, prog rock, to the point where we are just as lost as everyone else.” Call them art-punk, call them post-everything, call them metalified neo-folk noise wizards with a brass fetish. MLEKO is an articulate goliath that keeps it weird, beautiful and joyous.

Vehicle is a hellpop beat combo from Leeds

Bramwell are a Devonshire formed but Cardiff based psychedelic power pop group in the vein of The Bevis Frond and The Cleaners From Venus. After a successful 2026 which involved releasing the Standing on Stones / British Rails (Are Long and Fast) 7" on Gob Nation, tours with The Tubs and Hitmen and a show at London's ICA with Sharp Pins, Bramwell look forward to releasing their debut LP in early 2027.

Originally found under a gooseberry bush before growing up in Gloucestershire, Dan Pacini is a picker of guitars and banjos, and a singer of songs. 

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Having played in Hypothetics and with Myer U Clark, he now sets forth in his own regard with his own songs about things he has seen and thought about himself. His debut single ‘Grass Seeds’ teases a world of private symbolism, crowned by baroque guitar lines and cloaked in a verdant soup of other noises. 

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He also runs Long Cat Recording Co, host of the alternative folk night held on the last Thursday of each month at the Star and Dove in Bristol. 
 

Haunting vocals, rumbling bass, intricate drum patterns and lilting guitar lines are the sounds that create Bristol’s upcoming “Myrtle”. Expect Myrtle to take you on a journey through heavy, ambient moments, ghostly vocals, delicate finger picking and poignant lyrics as they combine folk with shoe-gaze.

Made up of Grace Mackenzie (vocals, guitar), Will Murphy (guitar), Munashe
Kapswarah (Drums) and Reuben Reed Sanderson (bass). The band was formerly known as “Grack Mack & The Pack”, the name change cements a change in musical direction for the band, demonstrated in their most recent EP “shells”.

Bristol based singer-songwriter and guitar player Scarlet Reading recently released her debut album The Arches. A folk-influenced record which is personal and reflective, featuring songwriting rooted in the ocean, in cars and on walks in vast landscapes. Heard through her clean and melancholic voice, are violins, cellos and flutes. It is an observational record, stripped back and warm and sad, yet distinctly hopeful. Scarlet often plays solo.

elwell deliver a blistering barrage of jangly, emo power-pop that wouldn't be out of place on NME's famed C86 cassete, with a range of modern influences including Ovlov, Balkans and Pavement.

Tigers and Flies are a 6 piece art pop group. Think of them as the musical equivalent of patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time: big pop choruses will get your body moving and limbs flailing, while off-kilter rhythms and nods to the no-wave will get you reaching for your thinking caps. Motor-coordination punk? Thought pop? Something along those lines.

Cardiff-based Cyn Cwsg are capable of putting you in a state of melodic hypnosis. Their debut EP Pydru yn yr Haul moved between Welsh and English, pairing warm harmonies with an instinct for melody. Since then, Megan Plis has shown their tender side, while Mobius embraced angular guitars, shifting rhythms and psychedelic absurdism. So Young Magazine described the band as “taking off the stabilisers and going full stadium”, with the single picking up support from BBC Radio 6 Music, Radio X and Spotify editorial. Following a buzzy Great Escape appearance, a place in the Green Man Rising final and a slot on the festival’s Rising stage, Cyn Cwsg are gearing up for their second EP, Let a Thousand Blossoms (January 2027). New single Katter brings Television-inspired guitars and a wry take on Westminster politics to a sound that retains the band's bilingual identity, warmth and melodic instincts.