The Great Escape, taking place from 14-17 May 2025 in Brighton, unveils its full festival schedule for this year’s edition, featuring a whopping line-up of 450+ artists. Among them are 4 Austrian acts. Read on to find all about them and where you can hear them at TGE 2025.
Austrian ARTISTS: Line Up
GARDENS
The Hope and Ruin: 1:30pm Thursday, May 15 (AUSTRIAN HEARTBEATS MATINEE)
Komedia Studio: 11:15pm Friday, May 16
Austria is a place of high-altitudes and fittingly, the superb songwriting and musicianship of GARDENS sits at a bird’s eye view, embracing change with uncanny clarity, warmth and self-awareness, along with darker hues. The quartet of Luca Müller, Peter Mathis, Patrick Stieger and Laura Keiblinger just released their debut-album “Flaws”.
Beneath elementary but deceptively intricate arrangements, Luca’s savvy songwriting instincts chronicle trials of mental health, the rites of passage of youth and the dizzying fogs of heartbreak. Naming your album Flaws is as frank an admission of fresh scars still in the process of healing, right beneath a diamond-flickering surface.
KÄSSY
The Hope and Ruin: 12:30pm Thursday, May 15 (AUSTRIAN HEARTBEATS MATINEE)
Fabrica: 11:30pm Friday, May 16
KÄSSY is anything and anyone she wants to be. Singer, instrumentalist, producer, performer. Her music sometimes sounds like walking through the deepest depths of eclectic mania hell and other times it sounds like floating through the highest heavens of intense emotion and apathy. Its prettiness is sprinkled with paranoia and sometimes even downright ugliness.
Laundromat Chicks
The Hope and Ruin: 2:30pm Thursday, May 15 (AUSTRIAN HEARTBEATS MATINEE)
TGE Beach – Soundwaves: 7:15pm Friday, May 16
Since taking the Vienna music scene by storm with debut “Trouble” (2022) and follow-up “Lightning Trails”(2023), jangle pop maestros Laundromat Chicks occupy that rare pleasure zone where humor, swagger and vulnerability overlap. From adolescent power pop anthems to crisp jangle pop, Laundromat Chicks are the kind of band who remind you of all your favorite bands at once. On their latest album “Sometimes Possessed” – out on Siluh Records – the band expands their sound palette and songwriting further, alternating their usual quick-witted guitar anthems with more abstract, mellow-sounding musical ideas.
Lucy Dreams
The Hope and Ruin: 3:30pm Thursday, May 15 (AUSTRIAN HEARTBEATS MATINEE)
Queens Hotel: 9:30pm Friday, May 16
Lucy Dreams is a dreampop trio hailing from the cultural metropolis Vienna and consists of David Reiterer and Philipp Prueckl. Wait, trio? That is correct, because the essence of this band arises from a crystal ball that is seemingly enthroned above all their output. Lucy is an independent system of digital and analogue effects, which was developed by Davidand Philipp specifically for music production. Lucy can be understood as an A.I. – however, the connection between her and the two musicians of human lineage is a far more intimate one, as Lucy is deeply involved in the songwriting process. Nobel Prize winner and poet laureate Kazuo Ishiguro recently referred to his Klara as an A.F., an artificial friend, while tech magnates call their offspring X AE A-XII. So, at the very least, Lucy deserves the title of A.B., an artificial band member, whose shape gives her a minimum amount of plasticity.
Catch all the Austrian acts at our AUSTRIAN HEARTBEATS matinee showcase on Thursday, May 15 at The Hope and Ruin, or Friday, May 16 for their further festival shows. See you in Brighton!