Great Sounds Great festival

Anthonie Tonnon returns with new music and a set that swaps the guitar for the vocoder, converts dual Synthstrom Deluges into honorary CDJs, and takes performative cues from turn of the millennium dance culture.

Baby Zionov makes high-speed girly bubblegum laser-sound boogie shoes dance music inspired by 90s rave culture and the mid-2000s Internet.

Weaving kaleidoscopic synthesizers and swirling guitar strums with rock and electronic drums, BADTAB is a psychedelic and unpredictable auditory experience.

The brainchild of esteemed turntablist/beatmaker extraordinaire ALPHABETHEAD, and multi-disciplinary lyricist YOUNG GHO$T, Bad Taste is the sum of your wildest dreams and your worst nightmares. Whatever you're expecting, don't do that - be prepared for the best, and worst time of your life.

Baeoli plays jungle with heart, that's rough and rooted in raw ‘90s energy. Fast breaks, deep bass, and tracks built for release on the dance floor. Their sets are all about the rhythm that pulls you in and keeps you moving. Just sound system pressure, shared energy, and a proper love for dancing!

Bathysphere play sometimes very quiet and sometimes very loud. Just ya classic Dunedin indie-pop-noise-rock really!

Perrenial provedores of melodic twisted wistful folk to psychedelic rock to bouncy twee pop. The Bats, are gearing up to celebrate the release of their new album, “Corner Coming Up”. Recorded at the historic Chicks Hotel Studio, the album promises to offer some moving music, both on the dance floor and in your hearts.

A sound-bed of big droning guitars and pop melodies, abstract confessionals and melodic guitar pyrotechnics shot through an antipodean lens.

It's like the Beach Boys if they had found crack.

Eveline Breaker is the solo project made by a blonde girl from Wellington. Her music combines sparkly digital bliss, dense and emotional soundscapes, sugar-sweet songwriting and the occasional crushing wall of guitar noise. Truthfully all she really cares about is writing a really catchy melody so she prefers to just call it pop music.

Three still-youthful gentlemen arrive abruptly to their third decade of life. The path they had taken now obscured, they look only ahead, ruminatively, writing indelible this moment of angst, of triumph, of sadness, and exuberant joy.
Lower back pain in musical terms, sensible shoes are a must.

Half/Angel defy genres & expectations, with a sound that’s equal parts experimental noise rock and ambient psychedelia. Blending intricate melodies with lush, textured soundscapes, Half/Angel makes music that is as unpredictable as it is captivating.

Informed by their deep knowledge of every pop hit: from wedding band dance-floor fillers, to pub-rock anthems and kiwi classics: broken down, fermented, digested and reassembled into almost unrecognisable new forms, Hans Pucket create utterly charming hits of melody and groove.

Iris Little walks between worlds, genres and gender. An experimental singer-songwriter and storyteller who looks beyond binaries and boundaries, they effortlessly combine quiet moments cribbed from jazzy folk with the physical heft of industrial, trip-hop and EBM, and the ritualistic psychedelia of avant-R&B.

Melbourne indie icon Jen Cloher (now based in Ōtaki) has been hailed as one of Australia's finest songwriters. "A modern day Patti Smith whose brutally honest, politically charged lyrics mark them out as one of the most interesting and important artists of their day.” - The Independent UK

Mixing afro-inspired diaspora sounds, both high energy & introspective, JessB is becoming a force to be reckoned with both at home and around the globe. Collaborating with acts such as Saweetie, Kranium, G Flip, Stan Walker and Baker Boy, JessB is also a MTV European Music Award winner.

JHL blends pop and noisy club music to scratch ADHD-riddled brains.

Maestro of the uplifting tune and poetic suburban sentiment, Tamaki Makaurau's green thumbed guitar slinger - Jim Nothing is set to play Wellington for the first time EVER. Hot off the heels from his win for Best Alternative Artist at the Aotearoa Music Awards 2025.

Jordan Hamel is a poet who lived in NZ, then America, now he's back in NZ. His debut poetry collection "Everyone is Everyone Except You," was published in New Zealand by Dead Bird Books in 2022. He is the winner of the 2023 Sonora Review Poetry Prize, and the 2023 New Writers UK Poetry Prize.

Leah Dodd is a poet living in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Her first collection, Past Lives, was published in 2023 by Te Herenga Waka University Press. Leah was the 2021 recipient of the Biggs Family Prize in Poetry for her work completed at the IIML during a Masters of Creative Writing.

LEAO is a Samoan band blending Pacific musical roots with contemporary sounds, creating "niu wave" and "Pacific neo-psychedelia." Since their 2019 debut GHOST ROADS, they’ve been crafting a bold alternative Pacific music catalogue.

Searingly honest lyrics, coupled with visceral guitar riffs and dark looping melodies make Nicklin’s music an easily identifiable and totally enveloping world to experience. She will be coming down from Tāmaki Makaurau to play new and old sulky, grungy tunes.

Wellington’s The Phoenix Foundation have released numerous EPs/singles and seven albums. Their eighth is on the way! They have toured with the NZSO and sung on the interislander. Their music will outlive the holocene era.

Reb Fountain is an award-winning artist known for her spell-binding live performances, unparalleled voice & magnetic style.

Rebecca Hawkes is a queer poet and artist originally from rural Aotearoa. Her first book was Meat Lovers (Auckland University Press) - winner of a Laurel Prize for ecopoetry. In the US her poems have been awarded Salt Hill's Philip Booth Poetry Prize, Palette Poetry's Sappho Prize, and an Academy of American Poets Prize.

Over exposed indie rock god working on obscurity.

Sig Wilder & Friends blend kiwi authenticity with American grit, bringing you a well-worn handwritten journal of lived experiences rendered through metaphor, poetic prose, and the stylistic conventions of folk, alt-country and late-night heartbreak radio.

Stretching out over moody rockers and soft burning hooks, Pо̄neke based indie dream-rock songstress Sofia Machray is an electric master of the singer-songwriter gone rouge.

Ōtepoti sci-fi-soaked post-rock collective - part frenzy, part noise, full doom. Founded in 2011, Space Bats, Attack! is renowned for their spellbinding and frenetic live performances, drawing on their love for angular, expansive and hard-hitting instrumental rock, which is interweaved with samples and immersive visuals.

Wellington weirdos The Spectre Collective delivered a highlight of Great Sounds Great 2024 in the form of David Lynch’s masterpiece “Twin Peaks: The Return, Part 8” scored live by a band consisting of multiple theremins, a gong and many more instruments. They return in 2025, with who knows what in store…

A 10-piece Afrobeat Jazz powerhouse from Wellington, Star Time creates an electrifying spectacle for the dancefloor. Their mission is to make the crowd the undeniable stars of the show with their ever contagious, high-energy sound.