A closer look at the fine print of this year’s lineup.

We are one week away from End of the Road 2025 and can’t wait for it to begin. The festival, which closes out the music lover’s summer in the idyll of Larmer Tree Gardens, runs this year from 28^th to 31^st August. This year’s lineup is packed with highlights, the eye-catching names leaping from the poster including headliners Caribou, Father John Misty, Self Esteem and Sharon Van Etten, as well as GOAT, Mount Kimbie, Viagra Boys, Black Country, New Road, Geordie Greep, John Maus, Squid and Sorry. You can check out our detailed preview here. As we prepare to plot our weekends a little more carefully, however, we thought it was worth putting together a quick guide to some of the most exciting names farther down the bill who could well become your next obsession.

The New Eves (Saturday, Woods Stage, 12.45)

Not such a hidden gem for regular readers of the site, but for the uninitiated among you: The New Eves are one of the most exciting bands in the UK and beyond right now. Their hypnotic live show is bottled on the critically acclaimed debut, ‘The New Eve is Rising,’ which topped the UK indie charts on release this month and justifies the growing excitement building around this Brighton-based band. Rejecting the notion of being boxed into a singular genre, the quartet are absolute musical sponges. Their set is a heady ferment that evokes everyone from The Velvet Underground to Can to Television while gloriously intertwining garage-punk, krautrock and primal shamanic folk. It’s a free-spirited, Wicker Man-esque folly, the more lofty conceptual elements underscored with an infectious sense of fun. Find out what the hype is all about and join us, if you haven’t already, in the ever-growing cult of The New Eves, as they take their much-deserved spot on the main stage. (Brad Sked)

Search Results (Saturday, Big Top, 12.00)

We were bowled over by Search Results’ second album ‘Go Mutant’, which came out in May this year, and have been big fans ever since. The Dublin group operate with an instinctive momentum, writing ruthlessly efficient songs that assimilate the surrealistic ruminations of Mark E. Smith, the clang of Fire Engines and the deluge rush of contemporaries like Cola and Legss. At The Great Escape, they barrelled through a crammed set of songs in an electrifying, no-nonsense fashion. That might well be just what you need to immediately spark your Saturday into action. (Lloyd Bolton)

Daisy Rickman (Friday, Garden Stage, 13.30)

Emerging as part of the burgeoning British folk scene that’s seen the rise of the aforementioned New Eves alongside the likes of caroline and Broadside Hacks, Daisy Rickman’s freaky psychedelic forest-folk coalesces between both the agrarian and celestial – very fitting for a festival nestled in the West Country a little beyond Stonehenge.  Releasing one of the most underrated albums of 2024 in ‘Howl’, the Cornwall-based artist and musician produces a droney acid-dipped sound reminiscent of the more subdued-side of Kikagaku Moyo, completed by nods to the likes of Donavan and Nick Drake. Playing the picturesque peacock dwelling that is the Garden Stage (you can also see the occasional macaw make a cameo within the trees if you look closely), Rickman’s enchanting psychedelic sorcery will feel almost fairy tale in the viridescent surroundings. Expect utter transcendence as she serenades us early on Friday afternoon, helping to kick off the festival’s first full day. (Brad Sked)

Makeshift Art Bar (Friday, Big Top, 12.00)

Opening the humid Big Top tent on Friday afternoon, gloom-merchants Makeshift Art Bar may well seem to call forth the end to the End of the Road just as it begins. A goth-filled, barbarous industrial garage-rock frenzy, all coated in leaden pulsating post-punk, the brooding Belfast noise-brutalists blend the leaden sounds of The Birthday Party with Crows and ‘The Early Years’-era Gilla Band, all making for a tinnitus-inducing cacophony that could liquify one to nothing but pulp. Despite having released only a handful of singles and the new EP ‘Lackluster Writing Makes Fundamental Reading’, Makeshift Art Bar are making swift tracks as one of the most utterly thrilling new acts around. Be sure to catch the quartet as they purge us all from our Thursday hangover – just be sure to bring some earplugs along for the ride. You have been warned. (Brad Sked)

Dactyl Terra (Saturday, Boat Stage, 12.30)

If there’s a prize for the most outstanding band name on the End of the Road 2025 line-up, South Wales’ Dactyl Terra would certainly be in contention. They are, however, so much more than that. The fuzz-wielding alchemists are helping spearhead the UK psychedelic renaissance that has also seen the emergence of the likes of Midnight Rodeo, Melin Melyn and Mandrake Handshake. With one album to date, their immense 2024 debut ‘FEE FI FO FUM’, Dactyl Terra combine Hawkwind’s heavy space-rock sound with the more heady sides of OSees (Oh Sees? Thee Oh Sees?) and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, making for a psychedelic-space-rock riot. Their sound is no doubt going to catapult The Boat far into the stratosphere and beyond early on the Saturday afternoon, before bringing it hurtling back down to the deepest depths of the Earth’s core. Gargantuan stuff! (Brad Sked)

RIP Magic (Saturday, Boat Stage, 14.00)

We’ve been loving the new project from former Glows duo Marco Pini and Felix Bayley-Higgins ever since catching one of the band’s first shows last summer. Having put in some hard yards on the gig front since then, they keep getting better and better, the debut double A ‘Loot / Dox’ confirming the promise of those early sets.  The music synthesises the duo’s pop and electronica influences, creating something fragmented yet hypnotically danceable. Introduced a few years back, the Boat stage seems to be becoming a reliable one-stop shop for the freshest bands breaking into the End of the Road lineup. You can catch RIP Magic there at 14.00 on the Sunday. (Lloyd Bolton)

Sabine McCalla (Friday, Talking Heads Stage, 21.00)

We were very excited to see Sabine McCalla pop up on the first lineup drop from End of the Road this year. Based in New Orleans, McCalla’s music draws on that Southern tradition of blues, country and soul, delivered in an arresting vocal that has the power to evoke with equal conviction world-weariness and poignant naivety, and sometimes both all at once. She has not yet played in the UK, but the best evidence of her abilities so far can be found on the Gems on VHS YouTube channel, where she has become something of a fan favourite. The intimate, seated Talking Heads stage will be the ideal setting for McCalla and the 21.00 slot could make for a moment of serenity before the debauchery promised by the rest of the night. (Lloyd Bolton)