The Electric Picnic Music & Arts Festival takes place at Stradbally Hall, Co Laois on Friday August 31, Saturday September 1 and Sunday September 2, with The Cure, Hot Chip, Sigur Ros, The XX, Christy Moore, Elbow, The Killers and Orbital among the musical headliners.
Tickets and family camping tickets cost €230 per adult (two children under 12 permitted per adult) and Sunday day tickets cost €99.50.
Good weather is expected but, as ever with festivals, fans have been told to dress for every eventuality!
For RTÉ 2fm's Electric Picnic coverage, visit: 2fm Facebook, Twitter, www.youtube.com/rte2fm and www.2fm.ie/picnic.
RTÉ TEN will also be filming at Electric Picnic this weekend and posting interviews online.
Here, RTÉ TEN writers pick their personal must-sees at Electric Picnic 2012 - from dark overlords The Cure, to sparky Dublin guitar slingers Delorentos, to the sinister sound of Metronomy, to the fire and brimstone rock of Mark Lanegan.
The Killers
Sunday - Main Stage, 10.15pm-11.45pm
You know what you’re getting with The Killers and you are pretty much guaranteed to have an unbelievable time at one of their shows. With a strong back catalogue of live favourites like Mr Brightside, All These Things That I’ve Done and When You Were Young, they are sure to have you singing along and get your adrenaline pumping. Firmly back on the scene after their short hiatus and showcasing their new album Battle Born, The Killers are on top form and unmissable this weekend. (Sinéad Brennan)
Watch new song Runaways here.
The Cure
Saturday - Main Stage, 9.00pm-midnight
According to most reviewers, they stole the show at Reading last weekend. The Cure are clearly festival fit. They’re scheduled to play a Springsteen-like three-hour set at the Picnic, which can only mean a career rundown from the inchoate ramblings of A Forest and Killing an Arab, to their remarkable run as an incredible singles band in the Eighties, to their return to the murky shadows in the Nineties and Noughties. The last time Captain Bob and his kohl-eyed crew played Ireland was at Oxegen in 2004 so this is easily the main draw on Saturday night. Always far more than Camus-spouting miserablists, The Cure mix humour, mischief and malevolence live. The perfect band to play in the witching hour on Saturday night. (Alan Corr)
Watch Just Like Heaven here.
Delorentos
Saturday - Crawdaddy Stage, 3.45pm-4.30pm
This Dublin four-piece always provide a great live show. Having spent a lot of time touring over the years and playing festivals all summer, their live performance is polished but always energetic. They can be relied upon to get a crowd dancing and to draw in passersby with their upbeat and summery sound. Songs like Sanctuary and Did We Ever Really Try have the pop appeal of the likes of Two Door Cinema Club while there are definite similarities to Arcade Fire in the more anthemic Bullet in a Gun. Drop in and give them a chance, they won’t disappoint. (SB)
Watch Did We Ever Really Try here.
Hot Chip
Sunday - Electric Arena, 11.00pm-midnight
The great Saturday night gig clash happens when The Killers, Glen Hansard and Hot Chip all take to the stage at different corners of the arena at the same time. My money’s on these geeky danceniks from London. They marry hands-in-the-air beats and breakdowns with boffin-like electronica and infuse it all with human warmth. Expect the hits (Hand Me Down Your Love, Over and Over, Boy From School) and also tracks from their new album In Our Heads. That record may not have staked out the same radio play ubiquity as their breakthrough album, One Life Stand, but Hot Chip remain a great and very dance-able live act. Altogether now – Over and over and over and over . . . (AC)
Watch Over and Over here.
The Horrors
Saturday - Crawdaddy Stage - 9.45pm-10.45pm
They’re signed to the same label as Adele, which is nice, but Essex boys The Horrors channel the dark spirit of goth through walls of synth and shoegaze guitar. Their third album, last year’s magnificent Skying, saw vocalist Faris Badwan and his feral friends deliver a tour de force of propulsive rock action on the kaleidoscopic likes of I Can See Through You with its vast rushes of keyboard and the dazed psychedelics of Dive. On record, they’re intricate and hugely melodic; live, they conjure up a kinetic storm of pure sound that should shake the Crawdaddy stage to its foundations. They’ll be listening in the netherworld. (AC)
Watch the video for I Can See Through You here.
Ben Howard
Sunday - Electric Arena, 6.30pm-7.30pm
A folk singer with one of the most beautiful voices around and a serious songwriting talent, Ben Howard is one of the easiest artists to listen to and is sure to provide a chilled out, but exciting set at this year’s Electric Picnic. He recently covered Call Me Maybe for the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge and actually made it sound like a nice love song, so the man can do no wrong in my eyes and is definitely worth going to see. (SB)
Watch Call Me Maybe here.
Metronomy
Friday - Crawdaddy Stage, 7.45pm-8.45pm
Metronomy’s third album, The English Riviera, was one of the most fascinating records of last year. It was the sound of summer – zesty, breezy and sunny – but this was summer spent in a seaside town with a haunted pier, a surreal sky, and something not quite right about the locals. The band play a kind of electronic music shot through with strangely-strange Moogs and Wurlitzers and Joseph Mount’s querulous voice. You’ll find yourself nodding along to the sophisticated melodies but thinking hard about those lyrics. Wonderfully quirky, slightly unnerving. (AC)
Watch The Look here.
The Roots
Saturday - Electric Arena, 10.30pm-midnight
When it comes to earthly pleasures, there are few to beat going from a Saturday night into a Sunday morning in the company of Philadelphia's native sons. One of the world's greatest live acts, seeing them play should be on any music fan's bucket list - the 10th time is as special as the first. Expect sublime singalongs, surprises and slapstick as Jimmy Fallon's house band cherry pick from a to-die-for back catalogue and shrink a big stage to sweaty club size. And don't worry if you're not into hip hop: 'frontman behind the kit' Ahmir Questlove Thompson and co know how to rock it too. (Harry Guerin)
Watch The Roots live at Bonaroo 2012 here.
Michael Kiwanuka
Sunday - Main Stage, 4.45pm-5.30pm
Having charmed the Adele-hungry hordes when he supported her on his Irish debut in April 2011 at the Olympia, an early evening slot on the main stage will hold no fear for singer-songwriter Michael Kiwanuka - and anyway, when he smiles that smile even the fussiest of festival arm folders should come around to the Londoner's way of grooving. His debut album, Home Again, has proven to be the most intimate of treats, so it will be interesting to see how songs like I'll Get Along, Tell Me a Tale and Bones work in Picnic-land. Chances are you'll be singing them in the tent or on the bus back home. (HG)
Watch the video for I'll Get Along here.
Mark Lanegan
Friday - Crawdaddy Stage, 9.30pm-10.30pm
You wouldn't envy anyone the task of going on before Christy Moore, but if there's a singer who can pull it off it's the former Screaming Trees frontman, Queens of the Stone Age icon, Gutter Twin, Isobel Campbell foil and solo artist supreme. His new album, Blues Funeral, proves that years and road miles are only enhancing Lanegan's power and his show at Dublin's Academy in March was one of the year's best - heck, there was even a hint of a smile from the man himself (the photographer must've told the funniest joke in the world before this pic). Now, would there be any chance that he and Christy could team up on the night and offer some iPhone gold with a duet on Ride On? (HG)
Watch Mark Lanegan's 4AD Session here.
Who have we left out? Who are you looking forward to seeing at Electric Picnic?
