Hozier, The 1975, The Strokes, Florence + The Machine & Billy Eilish among first batch of Electric Picnic acts

The first line-up announcement has just been made in Urban Plant Life for the Electric Picnic 2019, which returns to Stradbally from August 30 to September 1.
Making the trip to Laois for the sold-out three-dayer are:
The Strokes, Florence + The Machine, Hozier, The 1975, Billie Eilish, Christine and the Queens, James Blake, Dermot Kennedy, Four Tet, Jess Glynne, The Streets, Jarvis Cocker Introducing JARV IS, Years & Years, Róisín Murphy, Metronomy, Michael Kiwanuka, Echo & the Bunnymen, Courtney Barnett, Parquet Courts, Mitski, Miles Kane, Freya Ridings, MØ, Amelie Lens, Maceo Plex, Kölsch, Sam Fender, Sons of Kemet, Yves Tumor, Serpentwithfeet, Shura, ALMA, Kero Kero Bonito, Let's Eat Grandma, Bodega, Cavetown, Georgia, Sea Girls, Sasami, G Flip and Heavy Lungs.
It'll be a victory lap for Andrew Hozier-Byrne who this week celebrated his Wasteland, Baby! album fending off the likes of Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande to debut atop the US album chart. As you can read elsewhere on hotpress.com, he's only the fourth Irish act to achieve this amazing feat.
EP is also to get a new festival within a festival called Freetown:
"Construction will shortly get underway to create a whole new town within the festival's mind-blowing creative acreage, located on the pastureland formerly occupied by the Oscar Wilde Campsite," we're told. "Anchored by Terminus, a brand new 8,000 capacity mega-stage for electronica and dance - presented as an Eastern Bloc architectural colossus - Freetown will rise from the ground for just four days of the year. Also within its walls, the labyrinthine streets of Providencia will unveil catch-it-while-you-can Latino life down every alley-way, around every corner, while on its outskirts, Spike Island - a swamphut jumping with seisiúns of slip-jigs, The Oasis, an improvised home-place for the gaggle of idealists and a brand new Cirque on the edge of town where death defying, jaw-dropping acts of edgy spectacle unfold."
All of which sounds pretty awesome...
Stay tuned for updates...