Michael Franti & Spearhead
Mainstage Friday
After headlining the closing night of Greenbelt 06 - one of the most memorable and infectious gigs the Festival has ever experienced – we're delighted that Michael Franti and Spearhead have agreed to return, this time to play the opening night headline slot. We can't wait.
José González
Mainstage Saturday
José González's story is rare in modern pop – a heartening case of the artist resisting the vicissitudes of musical fashion to carve out a unique, intimate style that is all his own, then defiantly following his muse all the way to the top of the charts.
Fightstar
Mainstage Monday
Splicing emo and metal influences, Fightstar’s music encompasses the delicate and the dark. "That blend of aggression and tenderness is the most important thing to us," says frontman Charlie Simpson. Drop in some good looks and great musicianship and you’ve got yourself an unbeatable formula.
Roll Jordan Roll : , Abram Wilson & The Delta Blues Project, The Kingdom Choir ,
Mainstage Sunday
With the combined might of Abram Wilson & The Delta Blues Project and The Kingdom Choir, Roll Jordan Roll is a powerful musical drama telling a remarkable true story.
Seth Lakeman
Mainstage Saturday
Seth Lakeman, the West Country-born singer and songwriter credited with bringing folk music to a whole new audience since his 2005 Mercury-nominated album, Kitty Jay, has just released his eagerly anticipated fourth album, Poor Man’s Heaven, on June 30th 2008.
Beth Rowley
Mainstage Sunday
With sales of her debut album Little Dreamer now approaching 100 thousand, Beth Rowley makes a triumphant return to Greenbelt. Fusing her vintage sound and sensibility with a joyous, contemporary edge, Beth Rowley has this year become essential listening.
Emmanuel Jal
Mainstage Friday
After his storming set at Nelson Mandela's Birthday Party bash in Hyde Park and with the release of an acclaimed new album, Emmanuel Jal is back to play Greenbelt again on the same bill as Michael Franti. Dynamite. And his story is every bit as amazing as his performances ...
Matthew Herbert Big Band
Mainstage Sunday
Restless innovator, sampling wizard, classically trained pianist and superstar collaborator, Matthew Herbert is one of electronic music's most versatile and prolific figureheads.
Howe Gelb and Giant Sand
Mainstage Saturday
Inaccurately yet affectionately dubbed the Godfather of Alt. Country by the British press, Tucson, Arizona-based musician Howe Gelb has remained the epicentre and creative force behind the ever-fluid configurations of Giant Sand for over a quarter century now...
MxPx
Mainstage Monday
Sometimes you can go home. Just ask the iconic, idyllic punk/pop stalwarts MxPx, who have returned to the almighty Tooth & Nail Records for their exhilarating, dexterous eighth studio album, Secret Weapon.
Daby Touré
Mainstage Sunday
Music stole the life of Daby Touré, the Paris-based, Mauritanian-born virtual one-man band who has supported Peter Gabriel and been a hit mainstage act at Womad.
Shlomo
Mainstage Sunday
One of the world’s leading beatboxers, Shlomo has worked for years to push the boundaries of beatboxing as an artform, making music with his mouth that you cannot begin to imagine.
The Ian McMillan Orchestra
Talks 1 - Rise Sunday
Take an ensemble of weird and wonderful instruments, add some charming, wistful, haunting tunes, stick a Barnsley-accented poet on top, and you’re halfway to imagining what the Ian McMillan orchestra sounds like.
Linchpin
Mainstage Monday
They met three years ago at a South London skate park. They have lovely hair. And 33,000 people downloaded their first music video. Linchpin have a tight, rocking, Foo-Fighters-meets-Fall-Out-Boy sound that belies their tender years.
Iain Archer
Centaur
Greenbelt favourite Iain returns to the Festival to play a special show with some of his friends. And he's very well connected!
Juliet Turner
Performance Cafe
A guitar left mysteriously on her front porch on the day of her fifteenth birthday gave Juliet Turner her first strum into making music.
Julie Lee
Mainstage Saturday
Embracing gospel, bluegrass, Maryland jazz and folk roots, Julie Lee has a smooth, lilting voice that gracefully slips across the borders of genre. Assembling melodies and stories like a patchwork quilt, her music is timeless yet vital.
Julie McKee
Performance Cafe Saturday
In a year known for young female singers, it’s tempting to ask why this one’s any different. That there is a difference is the point: Julie McKee, a classically trained pianist and songwriting chanteuse is dazzling the music scene with her quirky, jazz-toned pop.
Martyn Joseph
Centaur Monday
What would Greenbelt be without him? A lot quieter, for starters; noticeably less radical; and considerably less Welsh. Tom Robinson calls him 'one of the most charismatic and electrifying performers in Britain today', and Q magazine praises his 'depth, resonance and emotional punch'.
Starfield
Mainstage Friday
With their last album, Beauty In The Broken, these young Canadians achieved their best radio success to date, sold twice as many records in half as much time, and had their best touring season in their 6-year history - to say the least, they were gaining momentum.
[dweeb]
Mainstage Friday
High-octane, low-sanity Coventry band [dweeb] may put their name in parentheses but they are no wallflowers. A good-humoured musical onslaught.
yfriday
Mainstage Monday
With their last album Universal realeased back in 06, yfriday are keeping themselves busy (with relentless touring), and the nation's youth entertained, with their infectious brand of rocking worship.
Larry Norman: a farewell
Centaur Sunday
Larry Norman died in February this year. He was a Christian music pioneer, the ‘Godfather of Jesus Rock’. He melded the spiritual, the political and the social in his songs - the soundtrack for many a young believer.
Aradhna (with Sanctuary) : Aradhna
Centaur
Bored of the same old, same old worship music? Then let Aradhna bring you songs of devotion and complete surrender – in a style that will wake up all your senses.
Edwina Hayes
Performance Cafe
Edwina Hayes is a singer/songwriter who has been a regular performer on the UK acoustic scene since 1999.
The Response Collective
A wee bit Lemon Jelly, a wee bit Joy Division without the singer, the Collective throw guitars, drum machines and turntables at the wall, and what sticks is a thought-provoking, unpigeonholeable mashup.
Will Tang
Raised in Rochdale, after school Will put a harmonica in his pocket and followed his Anglo-Chinese roots to Hong Kong where he established himself as the 'number one blues harp player in Asia'.
Yellow Bentines
With vibrant piano and trumpet-led melodies, Yellow Bentines' energetic and fun-filled performances have built up a huge following and won them support slots for Arctic Monkeys, Editors, Brakes and more.
Tankus the Henge
Ragamuffin, street-performing gentlemen from the banks of the wide, slow-moving Thames in London.
Elliot Jack
Purveyors of lovely acoustic/electronica, the four members of Elliot Jack love delay pedals and e-bows, Doctor Who, Radio 4 and buying keyboards from eBay that they don’t know how to work properly.
Glitch
Underground Friday
Purveyors of the finest emo, Glitch have built up a loyal following, having notched up over seven busy years on the road.
Yvonne Lyon
Singer-songwriter Yvonne Lyon is among the best and brightest talent emerging from Scotland right now.
Foreign Slippers
Foreign Slippers, otherwise known as Gabi Froden, children’s illustrator and songwriter, hails from Norrköping in Sweden and is now resident in London.
The Austin Francis Connection
Underground Sunday
3 men, 2 mics, 1 guitar : acoustic hiphop to make you smile.
The Plymouths
Underground Sunday
Bournemouth band The Plymouths are not to be confused with Plymouth band The Bournemouths. If you're the kind of person who likes a danceable sweatfest of huge, memorable choruses and hooks, this is a band for you.
Helen J Hicks
Performance Cafe
Once a Cambridge choral scholar, Helen now delivers jazzy tunes with intelligent lyrics in the vein of k.d. lang and Elkie Brooks.
Cathy Burton
A firm fixture on the list of Greenbelt favourites, Cathy Burton has a voice of emotional resonance and tender fragility that recalls pop goddess Harriet Wheeler of The Sundays.
Brian Houston
Performance Cafe
Acoustic sparks on stage. Brian Houston offers up intense live performance with melodic dexterity.
Electralyte
Underground Friday
Electralyte call themselves 'a crowning glory in intelligent rock'. They cite a dizzying range of influences, but may we invoke Robbie Williams covering The Divine Comedy? Hummable tunes a-plenty.
Meltdown Hard Music sessions : A Failed Perfection, Back Pocket Prophet, Desert Sun, Ignited, Kashee Opeiah, The Steels, Voice of the Mysterons, The Irrelevants, , , , , , , ,
Underground Saturday, Monday
Meltdown have staged hard music sessions at Greenbelt for the past four years and this year's bill looks their strongest ever.
My Spoon
Underground Saturday
Releasing their debut album Love stories and Lies in March 2006, My Spoon have since been touring relentlessly around the UK.
Andy Yorke
Performance Cafe Monday
The man calls himself a serial band-quitter, having abandoned his long-suffering colleagues in Oxford-based (and critically acclaimed) outfit Unbelievable Truth on more than one occasion, each time to pursue an abiding interest in all things Russian, including a spell as a translator for Greenpeace.
Aaron Roche
Performance Cafe
Aaron Roche is from Nashville, where he adds his voice to an underground collective of artists and musicians. His recent musical work can best be described as "an experiment in the folk music tradition."
Eben
Underground Sunday
Citing Sigur Ros, Arcade Fire and Radiohead as inspirations, Eben draw on a wide range of musical influences, including folk, classical and experimental, to produce a sound that pushes the boundaries of the conventional rock band.
Esther Alexander
Performance Cafe Monday
Sweet-voiced songstress Esther Alexander has a solid background as a session vocalist - she's performed with Steve Winwood, Ruby Turner and the London Community Gospel Choir - but that's just the beginning of her talents.
Woebegone Brothers
Performance Cafe
Plucked from a storm-sodden field and flung onto a Greenbelt stage sometime way back in the 20th century, these rabblerousers enjoyed a brief but rapturous heyday, and now they're back.
Michael Weston King
Performance Cafe Friday
Former leader of alt-country pioneers The Good Sons, Michael is now a highly acclaimed solo troubadour.
Kadialy Kouyate
St. Ethelburga's Tent
Kadialy is from the Casamance region of south Senegal, born into a family of ‘griots’ oral traditional storytellers from the Mandinka culture.
Baluji Shrivastav
St. Ethelburga's Tent
Baluji is one of the great sitarists of India with the ability to enthral an audience regardless of their level of understanding of the musical genre.
Mor Karbasi
St. Ethelburga's Tent
Not many songs still survive from 1492, when the Ladino speaking Jewish population in Spain fled the Inquisition - only the most beautiful are kept over such a period. Mor is bringing some of these songs back to a wider public.
This Morning Call
Underground Saturday
Following rave reviews from the likes of Channel 4, XFM and Channel M, underground Mancunian pop artists This Morning Call bring their melodic yet experimental blend of rock and electronica to Greenbelt 2008.
Electric Nightmares
From the industrial heart of the North East, Middlesbrough, comes Electric Nightmares, a young original band playing their own blend of exciting, insightful rock. With ages ranging from 13 to 16, the band writes and plays well beyond their years.
The Race
Reading-based band The Race can already boast support slots on the Supergrass spring tour and were the first unsigned band to record a hub session for BBC 6Music.
Rising From Death
Five-piece metal/hardcore band Rising From Death share an uncompromising faith in God and a strong message behind every song, backed up by an unshakeable stage presence.
Finchley
Ex-Supervision guitarist Ian Finch set up Finchley with the aim of producing something "melodic and beautiful" and, do you know, he might just have managed it.
The Effras
“There are not many songs that start with the line ‘West Norwood Cemetery’,” so says Living South magazine, “but then there are few bands like The Effras."
The Excuses
Offering "rock music with a difference", London-based six piece The Excuses cite The Decembrists and Damien Rice amongst their influences.
Virgin Passages
Underground Sunday
If you're a fan of Sigur Ros, empresarios High Voltage reckon this band is "your new bible"; Virgin Passages give you chapter and verse on dreamy, spaced-out psychedelia in the tradition of Mercury Rev and Syd Barrett.
Kinzli
Performance Cafe
She's been called a musical magpie - her music spans folk, jazz, rock, country, Latin and gypsy - but her Tanita Tikaramesque delivery and solid songcraft deliver a cohesive whole.
Nikko Fir
Performance Cafe
Named after a tree, Nikko Fir gives you "music that is sharp and pungent and cleansing, with a slight air of loneliness and high places". You'll be pining for more.
Mordecai
Underground Monday
Mordecai are a South London four-piece whose music has been described as "a deep, rich, dark sound".
Miriam Jones
Performance Cafe
Often likened to Suzanne Vega, Aimee Mann, and Eva Cassidy, Miriam Jones has a way of singing the soul back home without putting it to sleep.
Ni-Cola
Underground Monday
Ni-Cola is a fresh talent from Manchester who mixes gospel, r'n'b and the catchiest hooks.
Garth Hewitt
Performance Cafe Saturday
Singer - Songwriter Garth Hewitt is the director of the Amos Trust, a human rights organisation and is a Canon of St Georges Anglican Cathedral in Jerusalem, and the Guild Vicar of All Hallows on the Wall in the city of London.
Danny Cope
Performance Cafe Friday
According to Acoustic Magazine, Danny ‘ought to have the record companies queuing up.’ Sound on Sound magazine would have you imagine Jack Johnson jamming with Randy Newman.
AndSnsum : Andensum
Underground Monday
Andensum are a six piece heavy rock/metal act, playing a fusion of eastern melodies with heavy metal undertones.
Jim Jones
Performance Cafe
He's not the Bishop of Liverpool, nor the suicidal cult leader: pouring his life into his music is what South West-based acoustic singer-songwriter Jim Jones does best.
Wonderland
Underground
Swedish punk-rockers Wonderland will have you in the moshpit in seconds with their no-nonsense guitar-fuelled onslaught.
Death Is Not Welcome Here
Underground Saturday
Five guys. Five words. Far from being just the band's name, these words have become a resounding declaration, with their anthemic pop echoing around dirty venues.
The Brute Chorus
Underground Monday
The Brute Chorus came to London from the four corners of the land to pursue their interests at college in Greenwich.
Les Passagers
Performance Cafe
Les Passagers, a "groupe pop-rock acoustique tendance jazz influences celtiques", naturellement, are a firm fixture on the Christian music scene in France.
Sounds of Salvation
Collected together in equatorial Reading, Sounds of Salvation (or SoS) are a high-octane, ten-piece ska band dedicated to leading people in their own unique style of worshipping God.
Justine Berry
Performance Cafe
Formerly of chart-toppers Hey Gravity!, Justine describes her solo work as a "Janis Joplin meets Led Zeppelin".
Her Enemy
Underground
Likening their sound to "a full on car crash", Her Enemy don't like to be pigeonholed but certainly live their lives, and their music, in the fast lane.
The Burn Band
Underground
All members of the Burn church in St Albans, the Burn Band break new ground in worship with fervent, passionate torch songs in an expansive rock style.
Gareth Davies-Jones
Performance Cafe
Whilst many singer-songwriters are content to pen easy ditties about their relationship disasters, Gareth Davies-Jones takes the road less travelled and deals with issues of global importance, as the title of 2005 EP - Faith, Folk And Fair Trade - spelled out.
David Clifton
Performance Cafe Monday
David Clifton had his first break with indie band Sensible Jerseys, who were discovered by John Peel & then signed to Virgin Records. He has played guitars and mandolin with Tanita Tikaram, jazz & blues singer Mary Coughlan, Steve Booker (Duffy) & Julia Fordham.
G-Force Alliance
Underground Sunday
Richy became involved in the hip-hop at a very young age and started out Djing before concentrating on MCing/Production.
Wille and the Bandits
Underground
Wille and the Bandits are a three-piece ensemble pushing the barriers of the roots rock scene. Forming just over a year ago, they have already achieved great things.
Six Star Hotel
Underground Saturday
Since their inception on a national stage in 2004, these four Irish up-starts have risen to the challenge of trans-European touring, self-funded releases and high-speed collisions with Hungarian HGVs.
Anna Elias and the Forlorn Hope
Performance Cafe
Anna Elias and the Forlorn Hope were formed in 2007 with the intention of exploring what would happen if you write and perform music with a simple desire to create moments of musical beauty.
Yusuf Mahmoud
St. Ethelburga's Tent
Yusuf Mahmoud is the tabla player with Baluji. He is the son of Ustad Asif Mahmoud from the most famous family of tabla players in Afghanistan. This family boasts a lineage of players dating back to the 18th century. Yusuf is from, karabat, the musical quarter of Kabul.
Captain Cameron
Performance Cafe Monday
Captain Cameron came into existence when the young rogue found that his brother was no longer worried when he opened the case for his acoustic, never mind played it. It had taken a while to rebuild the trust over the years after Capt. C spilt strawberry milkshake on his new strat.
