Performing at Groovin' the Moo 2011

The five-day, five-venue regional roving tour — known to fans by its acronym, GTM — has established itself as a solid festival player since inaugural year 2005 by sticking to a surefire quality-over-quantity principle. The headliners this time around are the Go! Team, rocketing in from the U.K. on the back of 2011's brilliant third album, Rolling Blackouts, and its standout, explosively jangling single "Buy Nothing Day," House of Pain, represented here by still-fresh bar-room party-starter "Jump Around" (mad to think that track is almost 20 years old), and sonic-alchemists UNKLE, hooked up with the Black Keys for the swamp-fuzzed "Natural Selection."

Check out Architecture in Helsinki, as we line-up a classic batch of GTM 2011 Next Steps.

Indie rock, hip-hop and dance-inducing electronica converge at GTM 2011, thanks to a judiciously selected roster that includes homegrown rap heroes Bliss n Eso, stirring up a positive habit with "Addicted" from 2010's Running on Air ("I'm addicted to this universal feeling called life"), Perth-scene mainstay Drapht, who finds a metaphorical way to include "Herbie the Love Bug" among his rhymes on "Rapunzel," Architecture in Helsinki, poppin' those body parts other grooves can't reach on "That Beep," and the Aston Shuffle, regulars on Ministry of Sound compilations for minimal, sideswiping pleasures like "Do You Want More (Magik Johnson Remix)."

This year's April/May interchange brings yet another outstanding Groovin the Moo event — or, more accurately, series of events, spanning Bendigo, Townsville, Maitland, Canberra and Bunbury: locations that are helping to tilt the balance of festival power away from the smoke of the major cities and into the fields. The tour for 2011 features a glittering line-up of legends and young guns, from House of Pain to Horrorshow, UNKLE to Datarock, each outfit handpicked to create and ideal balance between sonic finesse and all-out freak-fired partying. These Essentials squeeze all the nutritional goodness of the Moo through one well-directed sonic udder, so mine the mellow vein of Cut Copy's "Take Me Over," hammer out a beat along with AC Slater, and "Rock It Out," and scrape the stars with Birds of Tokyo ("Plans"). GTM? Get This Music.