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Oxfordshire festival is the perfect place to discover your new favourite artist
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Most festivals are guaranteed to lure in a few big names, whether that’s your massive rock bands, your hip-hop stars or your pop icons. The real task, though, is making sure the rest of the lineup is as thrilling – offering guests a chance to go home having discovered their favourite new artist.
At Wilderness, there’s a good chance you’ll find just that. Their 2025 lineup boasts a huge array of up-and-coming talent, many of which The Independent’s culture team have been raving about for the past 12 months. Make sure you enter Audi’s prize draw for the chance of winning a luxury ticket package for two, then keep reading!
Scottish folk-punk upstarts Brògeal are one of the best live bands around (we challenge anyone else to get a moshpit going with just a tin whistle, a guitar and some rowdy singing). The Pogues-inspired front-piece spoke with us in November last year and have since signed a record deal – they’re now putting out new music, including recent single “Friday On My Mind”.
Elsewhere, you should try and catch the extraordinary Scottish singer Jacob Alon, whose debut album In Limerence is out on 30 May – giving you plenty of time to get to know their songs before Wilderness at the end of July.
We recently had singer-songwriter Clara Mann in the Music Box studio, where she almost brought our sound engineer to tears with her diaphanous voice and beautiful lyrics. She grew up in the south of France before moving to Somerset as a teenager, and cites classic chanteurs such as Jacques Brel and Edith Piaf as influences.
Another great new band is “jank” punk band The Pill – Lily and Lottie on vocals, guitar and bass, Rufus on drums – whose pithy lyrics tackle gender stereotypes and gender norms on songs such as “Woman Driver” and “Scaffolding Man”. They’ve previously supported great bands including HotWax and Big Special, and their debut EP is out on 22 May.
How new is James Emmanuel? New enough that he’s only got the one song out on streaming services, the moving “Lonesome Man”. Emmanuel’s father, a preacher in Nigeria, is the one who encouraged him to get into music – he joined the church gospel choir where he discovered a love of singing.
When his father died, when Emmanuel was 16, he stayed at home to support his mother then travelled to the UK alone, working as a cleaner in a sports bar where he rediscovered his love of music. “Lonesome Man” was inspired by the obstacles he’s overcome but also the sense of peace and belonging he found among likeminded musicians in his new hometown of Edinburgh.
Wilderness takes place between 31 July to 3 August; enter a prize draw to win a luxury ticket package for two, courtesy of Audi.
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