Rebekah Higgs blazed the folk-electronic scene with a spectacular self-titled debut album. It would be easy to compare her to artists like Feist, but her voice (at once an "old soul" creak and a childlike breathiness) is purely her own. Using electronic flourishes and looping lyrics, Higgs builds complex but fragile songs.

The main goal of Metazon is to re-create the magic, atmosphere and the emotions that were established by the founders of Hip Hop. Before Lovebug Starski designated this term for the first time to describe the culture, even before the arrival of the samplers and the breaks that Afrika Bammbatta described as the “call of the drums”, there was a gathering of people attracted by the chants of the ancient tribal spirits.

The Sainte Catherines have been around since 1999 and are the first band Fat Wreck Chords has ever worked with from Quebec. Montreal to be exact, sacre bleu! Their Fat debut, Dancing For Decadence, is a perfect representation of their hard-working, hard-drinking, hard-hitting brand of punk rock. People call them crusty, punk, metal, hardcore…whatever, but they sarcastically describe themselves as “Motley Crue taking a bath with Tragedy while Hot Water Music argues with Leatherface about the state of punk rock.” At least we think it’s sarcastic…?

The Cat Empire has already stretched across Australia, taking over that hotbed of house-rockin’ bands one enormous theatre at a time. And now that their chart-topping smash Two Shoes has gone double-platinum in Australia they’ve set their sites on other territories, conquering late night TV in the USA – with performances on Letterman, Leno, Craig Ferguson– and packing out theatres right across Europe, as well as headlining major festivals in every corner of the world.