Widespread live touring throughout Eastern Europe made them a name on the far side of the German border. Here we were only able to sense their precious music – in the ads of the pink telecommunication mothership.

Their self-description says country unspecific folk - fitting narrative taking into account their refreshingly light mixture of fantasy lingua, horn loops and trippy beats. DVA create a surprising new world of sounds that seems strangely familiar and has its roots in Cabaret and Circus.

After heaps of failed band attempts these two introverted and quirky Poles found themselves forming a film music project.

After a few days in the closet it became evident that the just recorded brew of highly contagious indie shall be released under the name Indigo Tree on an album called “Lullabies of Love and Death”. Labels fought for the rights. The piece saw the light of the world last fall.

400 people attended the first concert. It’s about time they make an extensive detour to the neighbor republic, right?

The Dresden based P:HON are working on their very own version of post-rock – excessive, melancholy song sketches with elegiac string and synth parts break there waves at deeply dark guitar riffs like cinematic scores in noise.

Everything is bound together by a soft female voice. The winners of the regioactive.de competition for a slot at la pampa sail into the pop colored waters glittered by their numerous role models.

If you take a look at Tocotronic, you will find the essence of pop culture inside. Influencing generations of youths by now, the Hamburgers' version of rock music excites just about everyone below the age of 40 – Tocotronic do exist for 17 years.

They are out on a hunch for the zeitgeist without economic consideration standing on the sidelines. They ask questions which lie on the tip of the collective’s tongue. Only those capable of the artistic artistry to negotiate between the We, the You, and the Us, between progressive curiosity and classic elements, between aspirations and expectations, between understatement and hubris, only those will finally be exclaimed stars.

Rarely, however, these stars grow as naturally as the biography of Tocotronic suggests. Starting out as a small spring of inspiration, they ended up to be a pop-cultural torrent.

It all shows in their current state of being in the year 2010: Despite rising to the top of the album charts and playing huge events, they go their own way down to la pampa.

SDNMT are still the foundation of one of the busiest musical collectives in Germany. Around the band (for everyone who might wonder: they were called Seidenmatt earlier in their career) myriads of well known side projects found their home like I Might Be Wrong, siva., Kate Mosh, or Petula.

At the moment SDNMT are taking a break. People are occupied with their respective side projects and the successor of “The Goal is to Make the Animals Happy” is in the making. The grapevine says it’s gonna have more vocals, more electronica, and zippy rhythms.

Catch the live preview at la pampa.

These three Russians have already won this year’s prize for the strangest band name at the festival. How in the world a group from Saint-Petersburg gets the idea to call themselves Schweinemaschinen (translates into something like pig machines) may remain a mystery until they take the stage.

Certain is only that they are travelling thousands of miles to bring us a proper infusion of their dry mix of twanging prog rock with laconic one liners.

Sebastian Cleemann, aka Petula, originates from the collective of SDNMT.

In his solo project he is allowed to do everything and so he does. Technical aids, creativity and coordination skills bind together several voices and guitar layers creating complex song structures. In the end one might forget there’s only one man standing before them on the stage.

The debut album is called “Elephant Dresses” and has just been released by Froggi Records.

East of the river Rhine they haven’t been that active yet. Now Cercueil will play their first German festival performance.

The electro-noise-pop-project from Lille closes the yawning gap between the Crystal Castles and the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s and may well overhaul some of its role models on the way. Recently in France they received the respected Qwartz Electronic Award for their new record “Shoo Straight Out”. The rest of Europe is still waiting for their noisy bewitchment..

Well, la pampa is a start.

Get Well Soon were pretty hard to miss in the last few years.

Apart from Germany, where they celebrated their biggest success, the news has spread throughout the rest of continental Europe. Even in that kingdom just behind the channel the media praised the symphonic, melancholic concept album “Vexations” and declared mastermind Konstantin Gropper a German wunderkind.

The just ended two-month tour all across Europe was mostly sold-out and we are quite proud that Get Well Soon will honor la pampa with one of their few festival shows this summer.

The Kollektief moves in mysterious ways. Meditative, fragile, fragmentary, Dionysian, levitating – the new “Wildling” is simultaneously the most intense and most vulnerable piece of the trio to date, somewhere in between jazz, kraut rock, pop and hell.

Efforts to describe it accurately in writing are destined to fail, simply because if one wants to be able to grab its density at all it is necessary to experience it with one’s own ears. Same goes for the live situation.

Grab your spot in the sun at the lake, close your eyes and let your heart flutter.

The three sympathetic young gentlemen of the Flashguns are developing towards the new insiders’ tip from the UK. Last year they were on the road with Bombay Bicycle Club and Jamie T while their fan base throughout all borders kept on growing.

Mid-April their first EP “Matching Hearts, Similar Parts” was released in Germany and la pampa will be one of the first concerts of the Flashguns on German soil. Meanwhile they are busily working on their debut.

A spicy adolescent attitude combined with solid-grounded musical roots furiously pushed forward - Flashguns take their own way and certainly stick out from the ever-unclear mass of British newcomer bands.

It was one of last year’s highlights. Kat Frankie was sitting in the sun alone with her guitar, looking out onto the lake. It was one of those moments when all is right with the world; when insanity is out on a break.

It was a moment that is more than worthy for the attempt of repetition. That’s also how Kat sees it – and she will gladly come back.

The third indie-pop-nuggets-filled record, „Let This Be the Last Night We Care,” has just been released, and the Alcoholic Faith Mission is slowly leaving the cozy station of being an insider tip from the blogosphere.

It is due to the wide array of sounds, their love of experimentation, and their sheer harmonic force, that suggests the proximity of those Danish to North-American band collectives as role models more than the well-told founding myth of the band in Brooklyn some 5 years ago.

Nevertheless, everything here is original and wickedly catchy. So go now and praise the liquids of our lord.

Everybody loves cats. Well, alright, everyone except those with cat allergies. But in general it’s true, huh? Katze (German for cat) have been everybody’s darling in the German indie pop scene since their debut release “Von Hinten.”

Despite all the seemingly insurmountable barriers of our existence that Klaus and Minki are singing about, they never fail to let their music crack a big, fat sunny smile.

This summer they will be coming back with a new record to show the adult world more than just the rhetorical finger whilst they enjoy the artistic support of such formidable and prominent companions like Jens Friebe and Dirk von Lowtzow. Meow.

Concerts in France, blog eulogies in Belgium, an EP in Croatia, and now their confirmed gig at la pampa in the triangle of Poland, Czech, Germany – Fuji Kureta truly are a European phenomenon.

With their very own blend of electronica between dark and broken melodies, and under the influence of Björk and Air, they started out in Istanbul, which may not have been the first likely place to look for this kind of music. The ease of the melodies surpasses mere accommodation. Sometimes it silently drifts into drone sounds and surges back heavy-hearted.

It is a massive effort to keep the balance on the verge between letting loose and closing your eyes, and euphorically starting to dance. There will be new material out on another EP later this spring.

It is a rumbling and creaking at every corner of every song. The vocals are staggering at times and then silky again. Out of nowhere stumble funk guitars and punk patterns. The Flanschies are a bunch of happy-as-a-lark style deniers whose instruments seem to lead an anarchistic life on their own. The name leads the way as the three Dresdenites function as living flanges for their meandering song structures.

The Flanschies are the hosts of the legendary Flanschrock festival, and as such it was about time that they would pay la pampa a visit. They will open the festival with a diabolic smile.

After three consecutive years you may well call this a tradition. The party of three from the Metropolis of Saxony is family and again – that much is for sure - they will not record a studio album this year.

One may generally state that TFIGH would rather channel their energy towards activities in the rehearsal room forming new, happily post-rocking song sculptures than negotiate with perfidious record business players or apply HTML code to fashion a proper website (check out their legendary out-of-date homepage).

The positive aspects of this behavior are most benefitting for the listener in front of the stage. So it will be this pampa Sunday at the lake where TFIGH as our very own weather gods will bring out the sun (toitoitoi).

Steve and Ted have been with us since the beginning. When la pampa first spread its wings in 2008 these two were grinning at you from the first flyer. Every year their extraterrestrial performance of noisy punk Americana is one of the genteel highlights in the midst of July. Keyword: cleaver.

Consequentially, they already promised last year that they would come back and hop over the pond again for us. That is how it shall be then. Another chapter to the story on the inevitable takeover of world domination by the two fellas from Massachusetts is going to be added because: ZEBU! is not just music. ZEBU! is a lifestyle. And if it’s wrong then we don’t wanna be right.

Three Danish of the most different muscial backgrounds found together to forge their very own pop alloy of disco, funk, rock, and jazz. Sounds strange if you just read it but your dance nerves will certainly surrender once these three are loose.

Who Made Who were the biggest insider tip of 2009; they made it on every relevant “best of” list and legions of super-hip cover acts like Hot Chip or Queens of the Stone Age are remixing them or cover their songs live. Their live shows are legendary. La pampa is already waiting in awe.

Italy might just become this year's import hit for la pampa. Now that post rock icons Giardini di Miró could be convinced to join in - a band that is no stranger to all friends of genuine instrumental entertainment since the nineties.

After already contributing to a film score back in 2005, their latest record features the musical conversion of the 1915 Italian silent classic “Il fuoco” which they also perform as a live score on stage.

In Hagenwerder they are going to play a regular set though – heavenly harmonies with a pinch of noise.

They are the embodiment of DIY and heart-rendingly uncompromising. Somehow Trip Fontaine made it possible to open all doors and ears with their indescribable, um, rock, and furthermore, to keep these doors open.

New material is supposed to be released this year and a few vinyl EPs should reach the starving fan community just before the already infamous summer gig at la pampa. The whole album will be out by fall 2010.

Every couple of years there is a band on the rise that has internalized the heart and soul of the concept of rock music and faithfully presented its version to the world.

The three members of Earthbend have been doing that for quite a while now, in-your-face. We had them marked down last time but it didn’t work out. However, this year they are coming down all the way from Finsterwalde into the sunny pampa to bring us their stable guitar groove thunderstorm and the just recorded new album “Attack Attack Attack”. Wicked.

That’s quite daring for a German project as in who has ever done something like that coming from Krautrock country. Take a ubiquitous, angel-like voice carefully applied in a warm, clear, and firm way. Combine it with decelerated, reduced pieces of pop architecture full of hissing electronica. Eurythmics in Black and White.

Hundreds just stepped into position to be heard loud and clear: April will see their album released on the renowned Berlin based label Sinnbus, and in July the pampa awaits them.

Where post rock lures other bands into dead end streets Aucan have found new pathways. Soon they will offer remixes of their songs to dub-step DJs in Japan. Somehow this Italian three-piece made it possible to transcribe instrumental guitar music to the dance floor. There are moments when their music rushes like a post rock version of the Dust Brothers Fight Club soundtrack. Driven, gloomy, jumpy, devious.

Bratze are back – for their new album in March and later this summer at la pampa. Prophets cry it from the roofs the new record will be loud and bratzig. Way to go. It’s easy to imagine crowds of pampanauts practicing in balloon silk flash mobs for the hardest of all mosh pits to come. Please keep the stage intact!

More than 10 years now the three Poles devoted to their fascinating musical brew somewhere between post-rock, late facets of the grunge era and the coherent deconstruction. Often Chicago is named as the geographic orphanage and origin of Kristen’s unusual work.

Meanwhile they recorded four studio albums and it would be quite rude to call them newcomers. Nevertheless, even just around the corner in Germany they have hardly hit the conscience of the audience yet; remain a well-kept secret. Maybe that’s going to change with album number five due this spring. After all: The band still plans to save the world.

Yucca’s second record „A Different Time in a Different Place“ started out as an ill-fated project. Stuff like a flooded rehearsal room is hard to digest. Yucca never lost their nerve though. They took setbacks for motivation and crafted that feeling into the raging and driving pieces on the album. They still reproduce that live.

Here comes the next ascender from Nuremberg after the likes of Robocop Kraus and The Audience.

Those two Berliners have been an insiders’ tip way too long. With the background of already two self-produced records, they just kill you live.

Comparisons with role models are usually big as well as unnecessary. Lonski & Classen sound organic, atmospheric, and genuine. If you can make it to one of their rare live appearances, just go already. In any event, we’ll see them in the Sunday afternoon sun at the lakeside at la pampa.