Ultimate summer festival guide 2025

It’s our favourite time of year… we’re dream­ing of fresh green fields, flags wav­ing in the gen­tle breeze, bands start­ing up on stage and a cosy tent to snug­gle into at night. Here’s our UK fes­ti­vals cal­en­dar with an empha­sis on inde­pen­dents – and many of them come with per­son­al rec­om­men­da­tions. On a sad note, many…

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Terry Bickers and The Inner Spiral gigs and new music

Ter­ry Bick­ers, leg­endary founder mem­ber and gui­tarist of House of Love fame has announced three inti­mate shows and there’s new music – under wraps for now – to come too. The orig­i­nal band’s phe­nom­e­nal first album House of Love in 1990 still sounds as fresh now as it did on its release – tracks like Shine…

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Mogwai and Lankum for South Facing Festival

Two phe­nom­i­nal acts are con­firmed for a South Fac­ing Fes­ti­val dou­ble bill at Crys­tal Palace Park – Mog­wai and Lankum. The two acts will com­ple­ment each oth­er per­fect­ly and this is one sum­mer evening not to miss. This exclu­sive event marks Mogwai’s only UK sum­mer appear­ance and Lankum’s only Lon­don show of 2025. With eleven acclaimed…

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Mien (Black Angels and Elephant Stone) tour UK

Psych Krautrock band Mien – mem­bers include Black Angels Alex Maas and Rishi Dhir of Ele­phant Stone – is return­ing to tour the UK in May, and we could­n’t be more excit­ed. Mien mem­ber Rishi Dhir is lead vocal­ist plus gui­tar and sitar play­er with his oth­er band Ele­phant Stone who have toured the UK…

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New song by Marianne Faithfull plus RSD release

Sen­ti­ment around the new 4‑track EP by Mar­i­anne Faith­full called Burn­ing Moon­light is cap­tured by Mar­i­an­ne’s son, Nick Dun­bar. He says, “As we grieve the loss of Mar­i­anne, we are pleased to announce the release of these songs which she worked on dur­ing the year before her death. Mar­i­anne lived to cre­ate and per­form music…

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Love Motion stars Nile Rodgers and CHIC

Join Love Motion, the spe­cial one-day event, part of the South Fac­ing fes­ti­val series in Crys­tal Palace Park. This year, Nile Rodgers, co-founder of CHIC, is to head­line. With CHIC, Nile pio­neered a musi­cal lan­guage with hits like Le Freak and sparked hip-hop with Good Times and Rapper’s Delight. His work in the CHIC Organization,…

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Constellations For The Lonely by Doves

By some weird chance, the first time I heard Rene­gade, I was step­ping off the tram and cross­ing the sad waste­land of Pic­cadil­ly Gar­dens to meet a friend in the North­ern Quar­ter. Omi­nous, thun­dery synths and an echoey piano note fade to Jim­i’s famil­iar vocals describ­ing a bleak and tor­tured land­scape, both emo­tion­al­ly and physically.…

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Choses Sauvages release new single Cours Tourjours

We’ve become fans of French-Cana­di­an band Choses Sauvages with their upbeat brand of dance-punk. Their sin­gle called ‘En joue’ caught our atten­tion last year. Now a new track just released called Cours Tou­jours offers anoth­er glimpse into the Fran­coph­o­ne band’s sound. There’s a touch of Steely Dan to the open­ing notes before the track breaks…

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Spring UK festivals 2025

From one-day events to full week­enders, we’re delight­ed to see that there’s a grow­ing num­ber of spring fes­ti­vals hap­pen­ing in towns and cities around the UK. Check our guide to see if there’s some­thing hap­pen­ing at your local venues. Dark Arts Sat­ur­day 15 March Dark Arts is back again with a great line­up of punk at…

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