It was 26 years ago that Jebediah first shambled on stage in their shorts, sneakers, blue hair, dimples, grins and smirks and started bouncing off the walls with their roaring riffs and soaring pop hooks, tearing the lid off the Big Day Out and the Hottest 100 overnight.

It’s impossible for an Australian of a certain vintage to imagine those late ’90s summers without those delirious early Jebs singles — ‘Jerks of Attention’, ‘Leaving Home’, ‘Teflon’, ‘Harpoon’, ‘Animal’ — blasting out of every car radio and festival PA from Summersault to the Falls to Homebake. 26 years, six albums and piles of awards and acclaim later, the Jebs continue to captivate their devout fan base with their infectious energy and enthusiasm. There is no hiding the joy the band get from playing together and be it at packed pub or on a festival stage, it’s impossible to avoid their immersive charm.

Kevin Mitchell, Chris Daymond, Vanessa Thornton and Brett Mitchell were mostly teenagers when they set out: brothers and best mates from some far-flung Perth high school who’d accidentally stumbled into the first division of the global rock’n’roll perpetual and given it a cheeky kick up the arse while running rings around it with guitars in the air.

The story of then has been oft told. Jebediah won the National Campus Band Competition on their 13th gig, in October ’95. Soon after they signed to Murmur, Australia’s coolest new label (Silverchair, Something For Kate), they were catapulted out of the mosh pits and onto the main stage of the exploding ’90 festival scene. Bands they’d idolised yesterday — You Am I, Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, Foo Fighters, Weezer, Magic Dirt — became peers faster than you could say Of Someday Shambles.

“Pretty much every gig we played between ’96 and ’99 was a highlight,” says Kevin, “because things happened so quickly for us.

“Even now, we always have a good time together and I think people get that. I think people see it. It doesn’t matter if we’re playing to a sea of people at a festival or 200 people at a country pub. We just have a great time.”

With a long history of hard work and dumbfounding success, the band celebrated 20 years of playing together in 2015 and released Twenty, their seminal 20th Anniversary album. An exciting Slightly Oddway limited edition orange vinyl reissue was next in 2018, immediately selling out and followed in 2019 by the Of Someday Shambles purple vinyl reissue, which also sold out exceptionally fast.

2023 brought an exciting new era – Jebediah’s first single in 12 years, the energetic ‘Gum Up The Bearings’, was released in September. Following on in November was the announce of their brand new album, OIKS, on preorder and due to be released on April 12th 2024, along with the second single from the album, dreamy ‘Rubberman’. Valentines Day in 2024 brought the third classic single, ‘Motivation’.

Despite coming up in Australia, indie rock band, Last Dinosaurs would say they’re an international enterprise – and they’ve got a track record to prove it. Brothers Lachlan and Sean Caskey, along with Michael Sloane have played sold-out headlining shows and festivals across the US, UK, Europe, Southeast Asia, South Africa, and Australia. The success of studio albums, In a Million Years, Wellness, Yumeno Garden, and From Mexico With Love, have taken them around the world and back, playing notable festivals like Lollapalooza, Corona Capital, All Things Go Festival, and more alongside artists like Florence + the Machine, Bad Suns, Foals, Matt & Kim, Foster the People, and more.

In 2023, the Dinos continued to enthrall audiences with high-energy live performances in bigger and bigger venues. At the same time, they launched a cryptic new story in the seven-song release RYU. Like a transmission from another dimension, Lach, Sean, and Sloane embark on a cosmic adventure through time and space. Now, Last Dinosaurs follow-up RYU with the second transmission, KYO, to conclusion to the post-apocalyptic tale that focuses on the egocentrism and greed that led to humanity’s downfall. “N.P.D” highlights the “narcissist to the pathological level,” Lach explains. Elsewhere, “Self-serving Human Being” and “Paranoia Paradise” further explore the dystopian reality.

Together, the transmissions form KYO // RYU. The title pays homage to the brothers’ Japanese heritage with their middle names, Kyohei and Ryusuke, with “Kyōryū” (恐竜) also meaning “dinosaur”. This reflects the brothers’ duality and sets the stage for the album’s essence. While each track and side stands alone, they merge harmoniously to create a cohesive masterpiece.

Northeast Party House are undoubtedly a party band, but don’t let that fool you. The Melbourne alternative dance outfit might be known for their unapologetically hedonistic lyrics and raucous live shows, but behind their songs of excess and frivolity is a band of surprising substance.

The high-energy party starters have moved on from warehouse parties in Melbourne’s inner city to national festival closers. NPH have built a loyal fan base around three self-produced, guitar-driven, dance-heavy LPs Any Given Weekend (2014), Dare (2016) & Shelf Life (2020), which have seen the band tour constantly in their home country as well as internationally, playing sold out headline shows and showcase events at The Great Escape (UK), CMJ (NY) and Culture Collide (LA).

Almost entirely self-produced, the band, who met as students at a Melbourne high school, specialise in detailed melodies, sugary hooks, exhilarating beats and rhythmic guitars. They occupy a unique position in the Australian music scene as one of the few acts who are equally accomplished on stage and in the studio. This comes to the fore at their thrilling live gigs, where skilful guitars and drums retain the feeling of a band, while dynamic electronic elements heighten the party vibe.

Northeast Party House returned with their first new music since their record Shelf Life (2020) with the release of their latest singles ‘Cranky Boy’, which made it in triple j’s Hottest 200 of 2022, ‘Brain Freeze’ (2023), and ‘Wish We Could’ (2024). Showing no signs of stopping, the renowned electronic dance act took their electric live show to theatres and venues in all mainland capital cities last year. 2024 will see more new music from Northeast Party House and more exciting news to come!

Sheppard are back! With their global hit ‘Good Time’ still gracing airwaves around the world and their uplifting, indie-pop smash ‘Daylight’ still proving itself to be a fan favourite, it’s undeniable we’re truly in a new era for one of Australia’s most successful musical exports.

The sibling trio who currently spend their time between Brisbane & Nashville are set to release their next single ‘Edge Of The Earth’ in early March as they gear up to their upcoming fourth studio album. Fans are already affectionately referring to the song as “the catchiest Sheppard song since ‘Geronimo’”.

The band have now clocked up 1.2 billion combined streams across their catalogue, including 2014’s global hit ‘Geronimo’ plus classics like ‘Coming Home’, ‘Let Me Down Easy’, ‘Learning to Fly’, Eurovision entry ‘On My Way’, and ‘Die Young’.

The streaming figures demonstrate Sheppard as a truly international band, with their biggest audiences in the USA and dedicated fan bases in Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, and most of Europe and Asia as well as their home territory of Australia.

With 4 million monthly listeners on Spotify alone, and their videos about to crack 250 million combined views on YouTube, George Sheppard states “we’ve been very fortunate”. “It’s hard to put those figures into quantifiable numbers, but we feel it through our fans. Both online and at our live shows, it’s so cool to see such a diverse and multi-generational crowd. Honestly, we just feel so grateful. So many incredible things have had to go just right, and wrong, for us to have been lucky enough to call this our job, but it does also show the hard work we put into this early on has paid off.”

Kaleidoscope Eyes (their third consecutive Top 2 album on the ARIA charts) eventually became home to all the tracks from their one-single-a-month experiment to keep themselves busy during the pandemic.

While ‘Good Time’ captures them at their most loved-up and vibed-up, the forthcoming album will expand their musical and lyrical horizons. Fans will hear the band processing their “considerably rough” time through the Pandemic; this is most evident on the most recent release. “Obviously everyone was dealing with it at the same time, but the music industry and live events were hit particularly hard” George says. “We definitely felt that pressure too, but we also had some unique personal struggles happening underneath too, so a lot of the writing on this album has been about making it through a really dark patch in our lives, when the world was being particularly unkind, and finally making it out into the warm sunshine on the other side. A lot of the themes on the album are based around that idea of dawn. A new beginning, a metamorphosis. A rebirth.”

Amy Sheppard adds “We’ve had a lot of time to reinvent ourselves – so this album definitely feels like a rebirth of Sheppard.”

When Sycco sings about being a superstar, it‘s a declaration you can’t argue with. Flying high
and signing autographs is sure to be familiar territory for 22-year-old First Nations songwriter and producer Sasha McLeod. Sycco’s trippy bops have seen her land on the pages of Vogue (Australia), NME, Billboard, Paper, Cool Hunting, Nylon, Paste, Ones To Watch, triple j, among others and amassed +60 million streams (and counting). She sold out her debut national headline tour, landed #29 (‘Dribble’) and #46 (‘Ripple’) in the triple j Hottest 100, and performed for KCRW and triple j’s Like a Version. In 2021 Sycco was announced as YouTube’s Music Foundry Class of 2021, scored a Times Square billboard as the face of Spotify’s Equal Campaign, named as Apple Music AU’s Up Next Artist for August and won Australia’s prestigious Levi’s Music Prize.

2022 saw Sycco support Glass Animals and Tame Impala on their national tours as well as playing Groovin The Moo, Splendour In The Grass and the Laneway Festival in 2023, and performing at Great Escape on her debut UK/Europe tour. She also released ‘Ripple’, her collab with Flume and Chrome Sparks (15 million+ streams).

Sycco is currently working on her debut LP, set for release on Future Classic in mid-2024.

Thelma Plum is a Gamilaraay woman, musician and creator from Brisbane Australia, Thelma Plum’s debut album Better In Blak is a story about culture, heritage, love, and pain. With incredible strength, courage and heartbreaking tenderness, the album captured deftly what it’s like to be a young Aboriginal woman in Australia, while also managing to sport a co-write with Paul McCartney! Better in Blak became one of the most successful Australian albums of 2019, nominated for 7 Arias and spawning 3 Platinum and one Gold singles. The title track ‘Better in Blak’ came in the top 10 of the Triple J Hottest 100, as well as winning the prestigious Vanda and Young “Song of the Year” award.

2022 saw the Meanjin EP, a love letter to Brisbane supported by extensive national touring, numerous festival appearances and a slew of brand collaborations and fashion engagements. 2023 will see the first music from Thelma’s new album, and a round of international touring. The world awaits!