Wychwood Festival takes place at the Cheltenham Racecourse from 30th May - 1st June 2025 and as per previous years, we have delved deep into the lineup to suggest three acts from each of the days to check out. Whilst they’re not headliners, they are acts that we feel you will enjoy as you spend your time roaming around the festival.
Ready? here we go…
Friday
LOTTERY WINNERS
In 2008, the band honed their craft gigging in the pubs of Leigh. They went on to self-release singles and tour the UK on their own, as well as supporting many major acts including Tom Jones, Paul Weller, Shed Seven and Richard Ashcroft and more.
They were discovered at a live showcase by music mogul Seymour Stein. He went on to help them sign to Modern Sky UK in 2019 where they released their self-titled first album in 2020. Their third studio album ‘Anxiety Replacement Therapy’, which saw them collaborating with Frank Turner, Shaun Ryder and Boy George placed number 1 in the Official UK album chart. Lead singer, Thom Rylance, described the album as a "self-help tape" for those struggling in life.
Having played at many major festivals in 2023, including Kendal Calling, Boardmasters and Isle of Wight, they were also at Glastonbury, where they played six sets, the most by an original that year.
In late 2023 and early 2024, their ’This Is How It Feels’ tour saw them sell out shows across the UK, finishing at a sold out O2 Apollo Manchester.
After performing at several summer 2024 festivals with a growing fan base captivated by the group's high energy performances, The Lottery Winners announced their fourth studio album KOKO (an initialism for Keep On Keeping On).
ROVING CROWS
Roving Crows are an Irish Folk Rock band who deliver the goods with unbounded amounts of riotous energy and banter .
They are – Paul O’Neill (guitar and lead vocals); Caitlin Barrett (fiddle & vocals); Laurence Aldridge (drums & vocals) and Jim Smith (bass & vocals).
The Crows started their journey when a guitarist from Kildare and a fiddle player from Cheltenham, via Donegal, met at a festival in 2007. The music flowed and they’ve not stopped since, with 4 albums under their belt and several national and international awards, this, now 4 piece, are an awe-inspiring force on stage – unstoppable and passionate.
This Irish group seamlessly marry humour, provocative lyrics , traditional Irish tunes and rock to entertain and bring the listener on a ride that they won’t want to get off! They make a hell of a noise for 4 people!
HOME COUNTIES
Home Counties reside in Bristol and combine angular guitar work with furious percussion. Born from the evolution of previous incarnation, Haze - a band that made a name for itself supporting the likes of Shame and Pip Blom - the 5-piece make melodically rigid, socially charged anthems that are lyrically tongue-in-cheek and scathingly satirical. The first taste of their sound came from their debut EP ‘Redevelopment’ - a raucously danceable earworm that caught the attention of all and sundry. More followed, with a pair of self-produced bedroom singles spilling all over the wireless and press across the indie sphere. “Ramshackle guitars dance around a series of weird and wonderful noises” say DIY Magazine… And we find it hard to disagree!
Saturday
THE BUG CLUB
The Bug Club is a Welsh indie rock band from Caldicot, Monmouthshire. Formed in 2016 by brothers Sam and Ross Willmett and Tilly Harris, the current lineup consists of Sam Willmett (guitar, vocals) and Tilly Harris (bass, vocals). Initially playing blues music, the band now has a contemporary indie rock sound and is signed to Sub Pop.
LP number four, Very Human Features, arrives June 13, hot on the heels of the band’s first Sub Pop release, 2024’s On the Intricate Inner Workings of the System. That record saw the band continue their love affair with BBC Radio 6, start up a new one with KEXP thanks to a session with them, and crop up in the pages of the NME. Anything else from the bucket list? Oh yeah, festival slots including packing home ground Green Man’s Walled Garden to its non-existent rafters. Then shows across the US in those venues us Brits tend to hear about and that’s as far as we get. This record gives the band an excuse to continue their never-ending tour and feed their baying fans, engorged and expectant thanks to this band’s relentless record-releasing hot streak, a new batch of typically playful, riff-laden, smart Bug Club Tunes.
BEST LOOKING STRANGERS IN THE CEMETERY
LACK OF AFRO
A colossus of the funk & soul world, Adam Gibbons (aka Lack of Afro) has been releasing music for 17 years and continues to go from strength to strength with the release of Square One in 2023, his eighth album under the Lack of Afro moniker. Previously signed to Freestyle Records in London and running his own label ‘The Bastion Music Group’ since 2015, he has been responsible for some of the genre’s most important releases, not least his debut album ‘Press On’, described by iDJ as “one of the most important albums of the modern funk era” and more recently given ‘classic’ status by Future Music Magazine.
An accomplished multi-instrumentalist, producer, DJ and composer, his music has won worldwide critical acclaim and to date has gained 120+ million streams on Spotify. It has been featured on films, TV shows and adverts all over the globe, on networks including HBO, ABC, Sony Pictures, BBC, ITV, Sky TV, Fox Pictures & Warner Brothers Television, and used in multi million ad campaigns by the likes of Google, Spotify, Miller Lite and Adidas.
As a DJ and live performer, he has performed in over 20 countries worldwide and undertaken countless live sessions for radio and TV including two for the BBC at the highly revered Maida Vale Studios.
To date, he has released eight albums under the Lack of Afro moniker, three as The Unity Sextet, one under LUSTRE, one under his own name, an EP with Herbal T as The Damn Straights, albums for other artists, music for several TV shows and over 60 remixes. He has also produced 13 award winning, sample packs for Loopmasters.
SONGHOY BLUES
Songhoy Blues is a desert blues music group from Timbuktu, Mali. The band was formed in Bamako after being forced to leave their homes during the civil conflict and the imposition of Sharia law. The band released its debut album, Music in Exile, via Transgressive Records on February 23, 2015, while Julian Casablancas' Cult Records partnered with Atlantic Records to release the album in North America in March 2015. The group is one of the principal subjects of the documentary film They Will Have To Kill Us First.
Over the past few years, through the pandemic and many other challenges here in Mali, we were able to craft a collection of music that is very close to our hearts & souls. Héritage represents the sound of us reconnecting with the spirit of our Malian culture and the river of our traditions. It showcases both the incredible diversity, and also what brings us together as Malian people. And this is a message we’re happy to embrace and share with the world, especially now.
Sunday
SKINNY LISTER
Skinny Lister are a British band formed in London in 2009. They were a five-piece band until October 2013 when a drummer was added. In August 2022 they returned to being a five piece after Sam Brace left and the decision was made not to replace him. They are signed to Xtra Mile Recordings, and were previously signed to Sunday Best Records in the UK, SideOneDummy Records in the US, and Uncle Owen Records in Japan.
The band were formed in London in 2009 having met through folk clubs in Greenwich. Prior to forming Skinny Lister, Dan Heptinstall, Sam Brace and Dan Gray had played together in Indie band The Alps.
Dan Gray left the band in the summer of 2012 and was replaced with Michael Camino from Hawaii, US. In the spring of 2013 Sam Brace left the band and was replaced by Andy "Slim" Black; he has since rejoined. In the autumn of 2013 the band expanded to a six piece with the addition of drummer Dave Neale.
The band name is usually said to be taken from the nickname of someone Dan Heptinstall was at school with.
THE BAR-STEWARD SONS OF VAL DOONICAN
By a series of circumstances, none of which he is prepared to divulge, "until the book and movie rights are completely sewn-up," as he so eloquently puts it himself, Scott Doonican arrived somehow in Barnsley Rock City, and within the blinking of an eye had established himself as an intellectual, all-round athlete, celebrated man of opinion, and possibly the greatest entertainer of a generation, if not in the history of the entire planet. He is incredibly modest about it all too.
As The Bar-Steward Sons of Val Doonican's outspoken frontman, Scott is a debonair and theatrical performer with a half thought-out plan and a mouth with a mind of its own. Can you trust him? To be silly, yes. To be a gob-shite, yes. To behave, hell no. Like a bus conductor standing in front of an orchestra with a spoon in one hand and a pint in the other, he is quite clearly here for a good time, not a long time. He claims to have formed the band in 2006, "to fuse the theatrical stage antics of Freddie Mercury with the comedy-folk of Mike Harding, in order to form the world's greatest band in knitwear".
THRILL COLLINS
Thrill Collins are a British acoustic trio formed in 2009. The band consists of Robbie Pert on guitar and vocals, Andrew Lansley on double bass/vocals and Peter Harper on cajon/vocals. To date they have released three EPs recorded by producer George Shilling. The band are most noted for their application of the skiffle genre to modern music. Taking inspiration from the DIY ethics of the movement and artists such as Lonnie Donegan and The Quarrymen, the band have sought to replicate the style and humour that is closely associated with the genre. Using the trio set-up of guitar, upright bass the band substituted the traditional washboard percussion for the Peruvian cajon.
Thrill Collins grew out of a friendship between Pert and Lansley and the band formed when they played their debut gig before rehearsing, stepping in at the last minute to fill an empty slot at a local event. As the band grew in popularity Harper joined the line up ahead of their 2011 European tour enhancing the vocal and rhythmic capabilities of the trio.
So there you have it folks, 9 acts to check out over the three days that you’re at Wychwood Festival, we’ll be there to capture some of the bands perfomances and take some photos, enjoy!