From Royal Blood to Rizzle Kicks, Bat for Lashes to The Kooks, Brighton is no stranger to producing new bands of its own. But once a year, the seaside town famous for its two piers, pebble beach and easygoing vibe is home to The Great Escape – a festival dedicated to new music.
Over the course of four days, venues across Brighton host over 450 up-and-coming bands from all over the globe – a bit like South by Southwest in Texas but with more danger of a seagull stealing your lunch.
Kneecap, Charli XCX, Sam Fender, Foals, Adele, The 1975, Little Simz, Sleep Token, Bon Iver, and The Last Dinner Party are just a few of the names who have performed at the festival over the years before hitting the big time, so there’s no doubting its credentials as a hotbed for new talent.
This year marked The Great Escape’s 20th anniversary and unfortunately you’ve just missed it, but our man on the ground has braved the weekend’s bad weather, long queues, and some of the venues’ quite inexcusable beer shortages to pick out five acts that had Brighton buzzing and look destined for bigger things.
1. Westside Cowboy
Westside Cowboy are yet to release a full-length album but the Manchester four-piece have been on a steep upward trajectory since winning Glastonbury’s Emerging Talent competition in April 2025. That bagged them a slot at Worthy Farm the following June, while they’ve recently come off a tour supporting band-of-the-moment Geese across the UK and Europe.
It came as no huge surprise, then, that their show at this year’s Great Escape was packed to the rafters, even though they have less than a dozen publicly available songs to their name. The band have coined the term ‘Britainicana’ to describe their sound, and while the sample size is still small they feel remarkably fully formed for such a young band, with a definite transatlantic vibe to what they do. You can hear Pavement, Carseat Headrest and The Walkmen in there, but with an unmistakably British edge.
The quartet finished their Great Escape set all gathered around one microphone to sing the delicate In the Morning and a reverential hush descended on the seaside venue. Make no mistake, though, the noise around Westside Cowboy is only going to get louder.
2. Angine de Poitrine
Angine do Poitrine are not the first band to hide their true identities behind masks and pseudonyms, but the mystery surrounding the duo – known only as Khn and Klek – isn’t the only reason their two shows at this year’s Great Escape were so packed out.
Covered in black-and-white polka dots and dressed like a surrealist Slipknot, the two-piece claim to be space-time voyagers from another planet – and their asymmetrical sound is suitably otherworldly.
Khn’s loop pedal and double-necked guitar/bass allow him to play both instruments at the same time, but it’s the intricate microtonal tunes, which use the notes squeezed in between the conventional ones most bands play, that make Angine De Poitrine’s sound so unusual (if not quite as original as some might claim).
The result is a joyously complex blend of prog, math rock, and techno that makes Klek’s floppy conk bounce hypnotically in time with his jerky grooves.
3. Lime Garden
Not all bands that play at The Great Escape have to travel as far as Angine de Poitrine look like they have (even if they’re actually only from Canada). Lime Garden formed when Chloe Howard (vocals/guitar), Leila Deeley (guitar) and Annabel Whittle (drums) met Tippi Morgan (bass) in Brighton, but have spent the past few years touring tirelessly in support of their self-described ‘wonk-pop’, including support slots with Idles and Yard Act alongside appearances at Glastonbury, Latitude and Green Man.
Their genre-hopping sound is reflective of the liberal, fun-loving city that brought them together, with their recently released second album Maybe Not Tonight encapsulating the ups and down of life as a twenty-something in 2026: nights outs, break-ups and an existential crisis or two.
The energy of the dancefloor certainly plays a big part in Lime Garden’s approach to making music, with echoes of LCD Soundsystem, Hot Chip and Bloc Party easy to pick out among the band’s pick ‘n’ mix of influences.
4. The Haunted Youth
Belgium is better known for fancy chocolate, TinTin and dangerously strong beers than its music, but The Haunted Youth are doing their best to change that.
The band is the creation of Joachim Liebens, a self-confessed “lonely emo kid” whose sharp cheekbones are almost permanently obscured by a floppy blonde fringe, so it’ll probably come as no surprise that he spent a lot of his teenage years listening to Joy Division. There’s more of a dream-pop vibe to the band’s debut album, Dawn of the Freak, although only if the dreams in question are those of a sad vampire.
Follow-up Boys Cry Too, which was released earlier this month, has a harder edge to it, but the chiming guitars and shimmering synths are still the driving force. If you like Slowdive, The War on Drugs, and think Tame Impala would be better going goth, The Haunted Youth should be on your radar.
Salarymen
It wouldn’t come as a huge surprise to learn that somewhere in the Australian outback there’s a factory churning out great indie-pop bands, because hot on the heels of Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever and Royel Otis are Salarymen (aka Renee de la Motte and Thom Eagleton).
The pair started making music together in 2019, and after releasing a succession of EPs their debut album Take It Or Leave It arrived on Halloween last year – but there’s nothing scary about the Sydney-based duo’s timeless tunes.
They cite the Beatles as their biggest influence, although that applies on some level to about 99% of bands that have formed since the Fab Four’s heyday, so we'll narrow it down a bit on their behalf. If Alvvays, Beach House, or the more recent Arctic Monkeys stuff floats your boat, there’s a good chance Salarymen will too.
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