Best Kept Secret 2025 blokkenschema dag 1 - vrijdag 13 juni 2025

When the masked mystics of Glass Beams take the stage, they truly look like divine beings from another realm. Their music sounds likewise otherworldly: a mix of Indian classical, 70s disco, psychedelic rock and cosmic kraut rock – music tailor-made to lift listeners into a higher reality. Once a Glass Beams-groove takes hold, you’re fine just chilling inside of the spirit plane.

L’Impératrice’s superpower is to make our time sweet and sublime. There’s an ease to everything the French group does – the way they lock into a supple groove, the way the words roll off the tongue, the way melodies sparkle and fizz out, as if witnessing a canvas of stars across an unpolluted sky. If there is love on the other side of the universe, the music of L’Impératrice surely must be an expressway to take us there.

Known for her expressive voice and gorgeous, loose-limbed arrangements, Eefje de Visser is unquestionably one of the most influential Dutch recording artists of the past decade. In her distinct musical vocabulary, desires for both sanctuary and adventure form an enchanting whole. And with her groundbreaking audiovisual live performances, those qualities get amplified tenfold.

Nia Archives is a master of the beat, an artist igniting a new jolt of excitement to established arenas of electronic music, approaching her craft with a crate-digger's nose for new sounds. It seems like a tall order to fuse such a studious curiosity with the novelistic qualities of a Nina Simone or a Maya Angelou, but Archives makes as much impact as an orator as she does as a producer.

You could surely pen a sitcom based on professional mischief-makers The Vices. Four charismatic main characters with distinct personalities, perpetually at odds, yet ever close-knit as a whole. Within the backdrop of their plucky catchy-as-sin garage-pop hits, The Vices explore friendships, human nature, unknown affairs and the stubborn staving-off of adulthood – if only for a little while.

Nilüfer Yanya’s songs are like a warm bottomless abyss: you keep listening and imagining what's down below. This sustained magnetism lies in her expressive, dark-hued voice and hypnotic guitar playing: two distinct traits that makes you want to swim inside her records for eternity. An effortlessly cool, poised artist who has carved out her own lane within the modern landscape.

Barry Can’t Swim doesn’t take the eye off the ball concerning the main directive of dance music: sounds that inspire movement and a golly good time. His warm, richly textured modern house seems tailored for this very goal. But in reality, his crisp carefree productions thrive more on intuition and states of unthinking. For a guy who supposedly can’t swim, he sure knows how to go with the flow.

He might look like a dude pulling all-nighters in an expensive three-piece suit, Harrison Patrick Smith has done his diligent homework. The returns of all this prep is The Dare, Smith’s 2005-has-never-left reality filter taking us right back to an era of shutter shades, side bangs and sleaze. An open electroclash-forum to be your most debauched self. Neither your H&M nor your Balenciaga-pose shall be frowned upon.

Everyone in the world of electronic music knows the name Antal. This renowned Dutch DJ has been a true renaissance man as founder of record store firm Rush Hour. From vintage disco to cutting-edge techno, Antal’s curiosity for the unknown and undiscovered is never satiated. You always can count on him to handpick that elusive deep cut or obscure gem that unlocks new windows in both body and soul.

Dutch pop act of Droom Dit is pure passion unchecked. And you don’t need to speak a lick of Dutch to feel the resonant, expressive voice of Sam de Laat pierce through your very insides. Seeing Droom Dit perform is the equivalent of the floodgates opening up, drowning the landscape in tides of synth-wave, baroque pop and pulsating electronics. An experience that’s transformative, intense and above all… alive.

One person’s trash is another person's treasure. This saying certainly holds true for Congo collective Kin’Gongolo Kiniata, who use recycled objects to make drums, guitars, xylophones and whatever your imagination can dream up. It takes a certain level of artistry to make these things sound amazing as well, and Kin’Gongolo Kiniata truly crush it with their ingenious variant of Congolese rumba rock.

Cassandra Jenkins’s alternative folk is attuned to strange twists of fate and random encounters, often coalescing in such a magical way that one stops believing in these things called coincidences. Her songs build little rooms in time, exulting in both the cosmic and the everyday with peerless sensitivity and an unbridled curiosity for life.

Belgian rapper Brihang has a background in sculpting. His music brings similar qualities, patiently chiseling away to the heart of the matter. Life rarely cooperates with dreams, and it’s often those little detours that inspire his poetic, soul searching bedroom productions. Brihang offers food for thought on the familiar dilemmas, touching base on relationships, ambitions, craftsmanship and everything in-between.

Since we’re a festival in the middle of the woods, forest dwelling deviants Snapped Ankles should blend right in at Best Kept Secret. Their music might be bit more left of centre than, let’s say Fraggle Rock, but nevertheless, there is a fun feral energy to their overgrown psych kraut voyages. Rock concert or pagan ritual, you decide…just remember to drink full and descend!

Divorce are right in that sweet spot between the candid and the camp. The duo of Tiger-Cohen Towell and Felix MacKenzie-Barrow have a background in acting, which explains why their songs often feel like tiny scenarios playing out. Divorce have an uncanny knack for great melodies and winning hooks as a counterbalance, creating a warm-hearted closeness even when their music sprawls all over the place.

Two of the most prolific Dutch indie figures of the past decade also share another not so insignificant trait: they are romantic partners. Pip Blom's Pip Blom and Personal Trainer's Willem Smit form new joint project Long Fling, which sees them return to their scrappy lo-fi roots. Songs about "socks, shoes and staying home", where unspoken sentiment hides elusively between the lines.

Korean punks Sailor Honeymoon keep it all delightfully simple: great riffs and even better hooks performed with a spontaneous plug-in-and-play attitude. Not without its sharp edges either: “Bad Apple” takes aim at that one person in the friend group that turns out to be a complete a-hole, and “PMS Police”, well, that title should speak for itself. Sugar-coated discontent at its best.

There’s still so much unmapped territory within the indie rock spectrum, and Chicago’s Horsegirl have bitten a hefty chunk out of it. They found the sacred pipeline between Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo, which not so coincidentally got them inked by legendary indie stronghold Matador Records. Horsegirl’s songs channel nostalgic serenity and blissful noise: like those first jolts of love and attraction.

Frost Children’s dazzling party anthems are like pulling a slot machine again and again: colorful, clamorous, vulnerable and delightfully random. Nothing's off limits within the flamboyant hyperpop-wonderland siblings Angel and Lulu Prost have created; a universe where disparate styles like screamo and electroclash miraculously overlap. Invite all your friends, colleges and evil exes up to the front.

Like a hefty rainbow-coloured hurricane, Kenyan producer and artist Kabeaushé hoovers up and absorbs everything they encounter. This chronic curiosity manifests into their own boisterous, warped brand of pop music. The jagged strangeness of Kabeaushé's productions is saturated with a surplus of sass and explosiveness. If you need a good workout, this is the place to be.

Daniela Pes’s evocative, emotionally resonant music feels like it’s ancient – yet at the same time – it sounds like pop music that has travelled all the way from the future. At this year’s Eurosonic festival, the Sardinian artist collectively took people’s breath away with her highly fluid mix of organic and electronic music – harnessing her own vocal linguistics in the process. Awe-inspiring, otherworldly stuff.