Best Kept Secret 2025 blokkenschema dag 2 - zaterdag 14 juni 2025

DJ, rapper, filmmaker, producer: Mike Skinner has skin in the game at lots of different places. But The Streets remains the most famous hallmark for his scrappy, self-made artistry. Through the prism of Skinner's unmistakable mix of garage and hip-hop, his point-blank, witty tales of late night misadventures still resonate today. Often imitated, never matched.

The word ‘timeless’ gets tossed around a bunch. But seminal formation TV On The Radio are what you call an era-less band. You hear the past, the present and the future merged in a TVOTR-song – genres like synth pop, post-punk, hip-hop, prog rock, electronic music and soul effortlessly blend into a sound distinguishable from thousands. Word on the street is, TVOTR still have some tricks to teach that’ll blow your mongrel mind.

Soulwax's electro-rock universe is vast and still expanding at a staggering pace three decades in. The Dewaele brothers are legends for a reason: not many can turn their pundit passion for music into such an all-encompassing, audiovisual spectacle. Soulwax have always been about having the best time and continuously reshaping that joy into immediately satisfying music. And frankly, no one has been better at it.

Dan Snaith has the air of a quixotic mathematician, and guess what, he is an actual mathematician. Transpose that notion into his principal trade – forward-thinking, emotionally resonant club music – and suddenly, it all makes sense. Unsurprisingly, Caribou’s music computes effectively outside of the club’s ecosystem: during a hike, a yoga meditation, or in full band lineup at Best Kept Secret. How's that for an equation?

From composing robot orchestras to works inspired by the nine muses of Greek mythology, renowned Dutch harpist Remy van Kesteren is a chronic trailblazer. Remy's ceaseless drive for adventure and innovation allows him to traverse literally every musical avenue – from classical to electronic music to pop – without conforming to the familiar.

Ever since the age of 14, Oluseun ‘Seun’ Kuti has carried the torch of his legendary father Fela as the driving force of his just-as-legendary Afrobeat-band Egypt 80. And in the decades that followed, Seun has put his own resonant stamp on the Kuti-legacy, nurturing the old and trail blazing towards the new. The power of revolt and freedom ensnared inside a dazzling groove.

UK artist Kae Tempest has diligently achieved the title ‘voice of a generation’. Forging their distinct take on rap, Tempest’s probing poetry always cuts to the heart of the matter, holding one ear to the ground. Having played Best Kept Secret several times before, it’s no longer a secret that Kae Tempest is as compassionate and intense a performer there is, perpetually attuned to our collective truth and humanity.

Last time Lucy Dacus played Best Kept Secret, it was evident why she is one of music’s most charismatic storytellers. One of life's few certainties is Dacus connecting to a crowd, both as a solo artist and one-third of succesful indie supergroup boygenius (alongside Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers). Dacus's songs are like opening a book of faded photographs: full of wit, wisdom and powerful imagery.

For metal trail blazers Amenra, earthbound matters take precedence over the arcane: pain, trauma and despair are ground zero for higher states of consciousness. Though Amenra shows are indeed punishing, juggernaut affairs, the doom-and-gloom never stifles a rejoice in overcoming. Whether Colin H. Van Eeckhout decrees in English, Flemish or Klingon for that matter, an Amenra-ceremony will always leave its mark.

Irish punk rap group Kneecap are all about rebellion, reclamation and the right to renovate every stage they perform. Móglaí Bap, Mo Chara, and DJ Provaí were a movement long before a feature film skyrocketed them to fame. Possessing a lyrical punch supercharged with satirical wit, Kneecap are living proof partying isn’t just empty hedonism, but a positive form of revolt against the forces of oppression.

Great things come in pairs: Rick & Morty, Ken & Ryu, Thelma & Louise. Belgian duo Lander & Adriaan are akin to the latter: ditch all their former projects with a blood pact and ride off the proverbial cliff with a joyous jazz/electronica blueprint. The middle duo, because their music packs a punch. And the former, because their entire stage set-up looks like some wacky science experiment. A headstrong, massively addicting affair.

Few DJ’s and producers underscore the ‘deep’ in ‘deep house’ quite like Danilo Plessow. His sample-based Raw Cuts series on his influential imprint Motor City Drum Ensemble gained almost mythical status among clubbers and tastemakers alike. Plessow harnesses a visionary ability to fuse samples with hardware – crafting club music from that same gut feeling and spirituality as the records it inspires.

Initially, Jacob Alon studied for a career in medicine. But as it turns out, they did become a healer, by means of a guitar and an otherworldly voice. Alon’s modern folk hymns fearlessly explore fantasies of imagined love and a deep sense of yearning when reality doesn’t quite match up with the fantasy. With just a handful of songs out, Alon has already established themself as one of music’s most remarkable new voices.

jasmine.4.t writes mercurial indie rock anthems that transcribe, in her own words, “unrepressed queer woman joy”. The Manchester artist’s debut LP You Are The Morning, produced by none other than boygenius-members Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, documents Jasmine’s personal roadmap of queerdom, meditating on intimacy, heartache, camaraderie and transfeminine life.

The Pill describe themselves coyly as ‘jank punk’, an umbrella term for everything messy, noisy and fun. Imagine your scrapped drafts of social media posts being converted into riotous punk anthems, and you get an sense of Lily Hutchings and Lottie Massey’s irreverent, highly entertaining song craft. Usually it’s random chaos that triggers it: from peeping tom scaffolders, car accidents to the burdens of being blonde.

Vocal harmonies that wouldn’t be out of place at a wholesome high school musical recital, juxtaposed with dazzling, nightmarish prog-jazz plunges?? Ugly stretch the idea of what constitutes a song to stupendous new limits, and they do it with startling exuberance and ease. The Cambridge-based unit is like a Pandora's box for the adventurous ear, rendering the good and the bad utterly obsolete

Within the simplest chord progression, Christian Lee Hutson materialises fully-fleshed out scenes and characters; both the small, magical mundanities and the larger hopes and dreams. His songs often depict wryly funny, hard luck tales within the promenades of Midwestern suburbia. This is a guy who rhymes ‘Morrissey apologists’ with ‘different colleges’, and makes it sound natural and poignant

The moods King Hannah put you in, Hannah Merrick and Craig Whittle can pull you out of them just as smoothly. So what moods exactly? How about a bewitching brand of art rock that works splendidly in clandestine cocktail bars straight out of a spy movie. Don’t accuse King Hannah of pinning themselves down, though: songs like ‘Go-Kart Kid (Hell No!)’ break the suspense with a healthy dose of silly.

W.I.T.C.H. is the acronym for We Intend To Cause Havoc and that's a promise these tireless Zambian renegades of rock have kept since the mid-70s. A pretty impressive feat, considering how Emmanuel ‘Jagari’ Chanda and his brethren have repeatedly set a new bar for the chaos inherent of a good rock 'n' roll show. Zamrock is forever alive and well.

Heavy metal music isn’t just devil worship or being all mopey and glum. Newcastle’s loudest band Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, for instance, waddle through the mayhem with an outlaw’s glee, forging an unstoppable supermutant strand of noise. Stupid, senseless fun can coexist with catastrophic psych passages, and these pigs laugh in the face of destruction, defiantly bulldozing right through it.

L.A. Sagne admit that they don’t talk much about practice. But when it’s time to play, you better believe this loud, frenzied Amsterdam quartet goes hard in the paint. Noisy punk rock is L.A. Sagne’s chosen vehicle to express modern anxieties, executed with the irreverence and swagger of a skunk in a perfume factory. When this bunch invades a space, chaos tends to follow rather quickly.

One thing is abundantly clear with Thai funk/psych rock collective Khana Bierbood (translation ‘Strange Brew’): they just sound so friggin’ good on stage. The Bangsaen Beach group has an infinite supply of mouth-watering grooves and radiant guitars, swerving and curling around each other like philanderers in courtship. A bath for your brain and a fairground for your feet.

Fast-rising Irish band Cliffords soundtrack a shared experience as vibrant, maturing, and unapologetically Irish youth. Their songs capture the complexities of love, heartbreak, and the self-reflective nature of our generation. What started as a bit of fun gradually manifested into a familial bond between musicians devoted to writing songs that detail the trials of love and sadness.

Build things up, break them down and do that again and again. That's the gig Dutch rock band Paceshifters signed up for. They embrace it with unwavering belief, with always that next hurdle to clear. Paceshifters have full autonomy to figure it out as they go, which allowed their high velocity grunge/punk heyday to evolve into a frayed and melodic alt-rock sound.

With an album title like ‘Slightly Hysterical Girls with Pearls’, Amsterdam’s Baby Berserk give a rather outré premise of their work. Sure, they may look like they're in the midst of a post-fashion show limo bender. But their art punk shenanigans teem with primal punk fury and burlesque comedy. Baby Berserk are endlessly entertaining, understatedly political and the best type of weird one can conceive.

When your lyrics hit so deep that it triggers a wealthy member of the establishment to slide into your DMs, you know you’re doing something right. Norway noise rock/post-hardcore/heavy metal behemoth Daufødt are a hard-hitting, highly innovative unit whose music directly reflects a world on fire. Life is indeed pain, and Daufødt are here to inflict.

Television used to be that thing that rots your brain if you watched it too much, but such concerns seem pretty quaint today. Brooklyn’s TVOD (Television Overdosis) defy the whole ‘too much of a certain thing is bad’ medley with catchy-as-sin, piercing punk rock anthems, which seem to be in endless supply. For this bunch will make you believe you can jump a damn mountain by the time they’re done.

Lael Neale's timeless music sounds like a relic from some lost era: garage rock nursery rhymes, Motorik dance dirges and solitary Omnichord meditations that sound like Lana del Rey has been binging Broadcast records. A brilliant lyricist, Neale extracts the poetry from life's pivotal polarities. Through her musical lens, the mundane becomes mythical, and new spaces are carved out between excess and isolation.

When you hear Iris Jean, reality suddenly becomes like a movie scene or a fairy tale: not a place to escape from, but a world to fully immerse in, rendered with vivid textures and fun poetic twists. Even when she sings about themes likes death, heartbreak and homesickness, her voice and melodies never fail to soothe and uplift. It’s no wonder Iris Jean has become a viral sensation already.