Oaktopia Fest Taps Edward Sharpe, Minus the Bear for 2015 Lineup

Oaktopia Festival is heading into its third year in 2015, which means it's about time for things to get serious. Last year the upstart Denton festival upped its game in a serious way, bringing in artists like Aesop Rock, Immortal Technique and Neon Indian for three days of music in and around the square. Today they rolled out the first portion of this year's lineup, and it looks like they're being plenty ambitious.

"Look" should be taken somewhat literally in this case, seeing how festival organizers Monocle Inc. made the announcement in video form, with a pretty stunning montage of scenes from around Denton scored by a track from Biographies (who are among the announced bands, naturally). Leading the way are Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes and Minus the Bear, two bands that should be pretty good draws but aren't necessarily slam-dunks as festival headliners.

In the past, Oaktopia has distinguished itself in large part for its hip hop offerings, and behind those two indie rock bands the same holds true for this announcement. More exciting for the sharp-eyed fans will be Thundercat, who played Dallas recently for a Red Bull Sound Select gig, "Wrist" rapper Father and Minneapolis rapper Allan Kingdom, who comes with an endorsement from no less than Kanye West.

Filling out the rest of today's announcement are a lot of notable locals, including Sarah Jaffe, Jessie Frye, Kaela Sinclair and -Topic. Of course, this is just the first round of bands. "We have five more national headliners to announce next week," Monocle's Brent Camp tells us, so we'll be plenty curious to see who pops up then. We'd say this is a pretty good start though.

Oaktopia takes place from Friday, September 25 to Sunday, September 27. Tickets are available now at oaktopiafest.com. The cost is $57 for three-day passes and $99 for VIP, although Camp warns that prices will go up with the second announcement. The message is pretty clear, then. Post haste, friends.

Here's the full list of bands announced today:

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes
Minus the Bear
Thundercat
Father
Allan Kingdom
Horse Thief
Shlohmo
DJ Mom Jeans (Danny Masterson)
Sarah Jaffe
S. Good
The Unmarked Graves
Fab Deuce
Jessie Frye
Stu Brootal
Heavy Baby Seagulls
Black James Frano
Kaela Sinclair
The Boombachs
-Topic
Biographies

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