SummerSalt is thrilled to announce chart-topping, platinum-selling indie darlings, The Wombats, to light up the next series of concerts in September! This spectacularly sunny line-up will also feature DMA’S, Ball Park Music, Del Water Gap, Bea and her Business, and Ra Ra Viper. This is sure to be a party so get set to experience the best of indie music under open skies!
The Wombats are much-loved band and will perform at some spectacular sites ready to play a stack of new tracks from their hotly anticipated sixth studio album, Oh! The Ocean, set for release on 14th February 2025.
Since they emerged as leading lights of the late-‘00s indie rock scene with 2007 debut A Guide to Love, Loss & Desperation, frontman Murph, bassist Tord Øverland Knudsen and drummer Dan Haggis have maintained an incredible upward momentum. 2011’s electro-flecked second album This Modern Glitch made them Top Ten regulars; 2015’s third Glitterbug saw them embraced by the TikTok generation, with ‘Greek Tragedy’ a viral hit several times over. By 2018’s Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life they’d stepped up to arenas and 2022’s Fix Yourself, Not the World consolidated their unstoppable rise with the band’s first #1 album, seeing them reach over 2.5 billion streams. Headline shows at Crystal Palace and The O2 followed amid the band’s biggest touring cycle so far, taking in arenas across the globe and culminating at Reading 2024, where the band headlined a rammed Radio One tent overspilling with crowds of 18-24-year-olds that remain their core audience twenty years into their career.
The Wombats’ forthcoming album Oh! The Ocean trembles with the confessional emotional honesty that makes the Liverpool band’s music as cathartic and relatable as it is catchy and playful, to their continuously growing young fanbase. The latest single taken from the record, ‘Can’t Say No’ examines the human need to throw ourselves into wild, often self-destructive experiences in order to distract ourselves from our inner anguish. “We’d rather run away than feel at all”, Murph sings of in-song escapades, including car theft, vandalism, far eastern voyages and demon worship.
Oh! The Ocean is the band’s most sonically adventurous albums yet and is the result of the three-piece taking 50 new songs to Echo Park, LA, in July 2024 for six weeks of sessions with new producer John Congleton (St Vincent, Wallows, Death Cab for Cutie). The title is inspired by a revelatory trip to the beach Murph took on a family holiday. With Murph now feeling the benefits of his fresh perspective, Oh! The Ocean represents a line in the sand from which The Wombats are sprinting onwards into a mature new phase.
In celebration, the trio will be setting out on their biggest UK tour a month after the album release, colouring arenas in Nottingham, London, Cardiff, Manchester, Glasgow and Leeds before bringing their electrifying performance down under.
DMA’S (Tommy O’Dell, Matt Mason, Johnny Took) have gone from strength to strength since exploding onto the scene in 2014 with their debut single ‘Delete’. They’ve released four critically acclaimed albums – Hills End (2016), For Now (2018),THE GLOW (2020), and How Many Dreams? (2023) – all charted Top 10 in the ARIA Charts and resulted in multiple ARIA nominations, an ARIA for Best Group (2023), and have had 13 songs come in the triple j hottest 100, including #1 in 2023 for Believe (Cher) Like A Version.
Forging their live reputation home & abroad, DMA’S have played massive festival slots at Coachella, Lollapalooza, Splendour in The Grass, Glastonbury and Reading and Leeds festivals. 2019 saw the Sydney natives play sold out shows across the Australia, UK and Ireland, support Liam Gallagher’s UK arena tour and sell eight thousand tickets to their July Manchester show in a matter of hours. Back home they scored a 2x Platinum record for ‘Delete’, 2x Platinum for their Like A Version cover of Cher’s ‘Believe’, plus Gold for ‘Lay Down‘ and ‘Step Up The Morphine’.
The band’s third studio album, THE GLOW, was released 10 July 2020 and debuted at #2 on the ARIA Charts, #4 in the UK and #1 in Scotland. THE GLOW then went on to be nominated for 4 ARIA awards, and win three AIR Awards in 2021 for Independent Album Of The Year, Best Independent Rock Album, and Best Independent Dance, Electronica or Club single for the Avalanches remix of ‘Criminals’. How Many Dreams? followed in the successful footsteps of THE GLOW, achieving #2 on the ARIA Charts, #3 in the UK, and #2 in Scotland.
Brisbane’s melancholic pop masters Ball Park Music are made of five curious minds that thrive on musical experimentation. Their inventiveness is akin to that of UK supergroup Superorganism’s playful collaboration; the Avalanches’ ability to synchronise diverse genres, and Elliott Smith’s knack for carrying sadness with an honest wit.
It has been a tremendous journey since the five-piece formed in 2008 while studying music at university. In nine years, they’ve produced six albums – the last five having consecutively debuted in the top 10 of the ARIA charts. The band continue to sell out bigger venues each time they tour and regularly appear on the Australian festival circuit, including Falls Festival, Groovin’ The Moo and Splendour in the Grass.
Kicking off 2023 with ‘Stars In My Eyes’ reaching top 10 of triple j’s Hottest 100, and selling out nearly every show on the ‘Get The F**king Nerds Back On!’ national tour, Ball Park Music is truly proving themselves as one of Australia’s biggest bands of the last 10 years with an incredible catalogue of songs that have soundtracked so many lives.
Del Water Gap Scrawled in the margins of a William Carlos Williams poetry book dusted off in his late grandfather’s study, S. Holden Jaffe found a note that had once been left for his grandmother: “I miss you already, and I haven’t left yet.” A simple gesture preserved for decades illuminated a reality that Jaffe now faced at present: a perpetual state of similar departures.
The years during which Jaffe began writing, recording and performing as Del Water Gap were ones fuelled by the kind of hedonism that you can get away with when you’re young and hungry in New York City. But at some point between exiting the pandemic and releasing his long-awaited debut album via Mom + Pop in 2021, that lifestyle had swiftly (and necessarily) vanished. Any trace of cynicism began to dissipate instantly upon his first session with producer Sammy Witte (Harry Styles, SZA) who encouraged Jaffe to abandon the self-conscious subtext of his previous work and make the record he’s always wanted to make but never allowed himself to. That meant hoisting his sonic palette up into panoramic pop heights, first on “Losing You” and later on lead single “All We Ever Do Is Talk,” a joyride hinging on massive existential doubt: “will we ever get that feeling again?” Can the cardinal jolt of young love last beyond its initial spark? Can one still achieve highs without the drugs? Are the best times really over, or are they still within reach?
Bea and her Business is Drawing upon personal experiences which resonate across her generation, Bea and her Business specialises in instantly captivating pop songs which exude charisma, girl-next-door charm, and the conversational wisdom of a best friend.
Influenced by the likes of Lily Allen, Lana Del Rey, Marina and the Diamonds and Hayley Williams, it’s a skill which has set the self-taught London musician on the road to becoming the UK’s next international breakthrough star. Having released just two EPs – ‘Introverted Extrovert’ and ’Me Vs Me’ – songs such as ‘Born To Be Alive’ (a hit in Norway which saw her make her live debut in front of 100,000 people), ‘Never Love A Liar’ and ‘Safety Net’ are connecting with a huge global audience, leading to over 350 million views at TikTok and more than 100 million streams worldwide.
Bea started 2025 with a bang when she was named in Amazon’s Artists To Watch, was selected as a Shazam Fast Forward Artist for 2025, and was nominated for MTV Push for the UK and Ireland. Her rising status has been amplified by the show-stopping drama of her latest single ‘We’re Not The Same’, a song about the hurt of drifting apart from a once-close friend. It perfectly positions Bea for what is sure to be her biggest year to date.
Ra Ra Viper are an alternative/post surf rock group from Fremantle. The group are known for a sweaty and energetic live presence, releasing their debut LP “Big Speak” in November 2024. Looking introspectively at distinctly Western Australian emotional accounts, the band focuses on emotional songs filled with energy and a rough around the edges personality that is hard not to fall for.
SUMMERSALT TOUR DATES – SEPTEMBER 2025
Saturday 20th September – Torquay Common, Torquay VIC
Saturday 27th September – Woodstock Farm, Tamborine QLD
Sunday 28th September – Speers Point Park, Lake Macquarie NSW
Saturday 4th October – Esplanade Park, Fremantle WA
The Wombats will also perform headline shows through Secret Sounds
Link here for details
THE WOMBATS ALBUM PRE-ORDER PRE-SALE:
Wednesday 12th February 11.00am local time >
Friday 14th February 11.00am local time
COMMBANK YELLO MASTERCARD PRE-SALE:
Wednesday 12th February 11.00am local time>
Friday 14th February 11.00am local time
SUMMERSALT PRE-SALE:
Friday 14th February 12.00pm local time>
Monday 17th February 11.00am local time
GENERAL PUBLIC ON-SALE
Monday 17th February 12.00pm local time
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