Ada Lea, GB and Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band lead Best Fit's inaugural Summer Forecast shows

Taking place from 21-23 August, the line-up of the Summer Forecast sees Ada Lea, GB, and Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band heading up three nights of incredible music with tickets on sale from Wednesday, 18 June.

Joining our three headliners is Danish sonic innovator Alba Akvama; Dutch artist, composer and producer Robin Kester; experimental Cardiff five-piece Midding; and rising DIY country star Ollie Cook. There's also one incredible special guest joining our first night, which we'll be announcing very soon.

Over the last ten years, the Forecast has featured early shows from Mercury prize nominees Self Esteem, Jockstrap, Porridge Radio and Black Country New Road as well as Pale Waves, Katy J Pearson, Squid, and debut UK performances from Snail Mail, Soccer Mommy, Gia Margaret, Faye Webster and more.

The musical project of Montreal-born Alexandra Levy, Ada Lea has put out two albums on Saddle Creek and Next Door Records and earned a spot on the Polaris Prize long list in 2022. Her music has been swelling in scope alongside the evolution of her artistic life, and the shapely, intuitive songs that comprise her third album – when i paint my masterpiece, released in August – are surprising, imagistic and tactile. The record was produced with Here We Go Magic’s Luke Temple, who has lent his gently psychedelic sensibility to albums by artists like Adrianne Lenker and Hand Habits.

Listen to Ada Lea on bandcamp

Danish musician Gustav Berntsen AKA GB creates experimental music with a pop sensibility. Now splitting his time between Copenhagen and London, his debut record Gusse Music was released in 2024 via Denmark’s Posh Isolation and is a 33-minute symphonic collage of exploratory, guitar-driven songs, melodic hooks, neo-classical string arrangements and ambient interludes that won praise from The Wire, Resident Advisor, NTS, and was listed by Gorilla vs. Bear as one of their top 50 albums of 2024.

Listen to GB on bandcamp

The music of Louisville-based visual artist, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Ryan Davis reimagines the dated archetypes of modern day indie troubadour sounds and the inherent trappings therein. His 2023 solo debut was a dense collection of Americana-Noir that navigated a familiar yet alternate reality, one of enchanted mundanity and uniquely Mid-Southern introspection while New Threats From The Soul - released next month via Tough Love Records – is a masterclass in reducing the sublime to the prosaic and functions in parallel with Kafka’s winking dictum that there is an infinite amount of hope in the universe, just not for us.

Listen to Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band on bandcamp

The new project from longtime collaborators Max Winter, Will Lister and Imogen Williams (Imogen and the Knife), thredd are teasing their affecting and overdriven sonics via a mixtape on their website you can listen to at thredd.live – and that's all we can tell you about them so far!

Follow thredd on Instagram

The music of Groningen-born Robin Kester thrives in moments of quiet unease with the Dutch musician lauded for the stirring blend of chamber pop and psychedelia that filled debut album Honeycomb Shades. This year's follow up Dark Sky Reserve – released in September via Memphis Industries – is a soundtrack to all the thoughts that bubble to the surface once the silence sinks in.

Kester’s craftsmanship for writing delicately layered pop has been steadily honed for over a decade and she's carved out a unique sound that’s at once minimalist yet gorgeously rich and warm with influences from the likes of Talk Talk, Air and PJ Harvey.

Listen to Robin Kester on bandcamp

Joining Erika de Casier, Astrid Sonne, Clarissa Connelly and Fine Glindvad as another grad from Copenhagen's Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Alba Akvama makes music that blends orchestral midi with open-tuned guitars and jazz-minded chords, drawing the listener into a minimal and loopy universe that feels all together conceptual, eclectic and sincere. The work explores being stuck in time, relationships and unresolved feelings, and the songs could be described as like a single stream of thought, with no emotional resolution, beginning or end. Her first release is set to come this year but she also guested on fellow Forecast guest GB's album Gusse Music.

Follow Alba Akvama on Instagram

With the release of their first EP Nowhere Near Today earlier this year, Cardiff five-piece Midding debuted a sound that skirts around the edges of psych, noise-rock and industrial-pop driven by expansive tremolo guitars, a deliberately primordial rhythm section and a contrasting vulnerable vocal performance that’s both melodic and bracing. Nowhere Near Today is a record born both of private experimentation and public performance, who they are on stage and what they express on record informing the other but still distinctly each their own thing, shifting then dovetailing like the waves of feedback that wash through their songs.

Listen to Midding on bandcamp

The sound of Wolverhampton-based 19-year-old Ollie Cook sees lo-fi production mesh with grim-witted lyrics and an ear for melody. Dog & Gun – the follow-up to Cook's 2022 debut The Boy With Pearls For Eyes – is built around songs that explore the relationship between the euthanised and the euthanasia, diving into the mundanity of British band-culture, car accidents, and owing that friend a bit too much money for beer.

Listen to Ollie Cook on bandcamp