Australian Americana Music Honours

Beyond The Valley, Australia’s largest multi-day music festival, will mark its 10th anniversary with the biggest line-up in its history. The 2025/26 edition will return to Barunah Plains, Wadawurrung Country, from 28 December to 1 January, celebrating a decade of New Year’s festival memories with a truly global lineup.

Skunkhour will mark three decades since the release of one of Australia’s most enduring funk-rock singles with the Up To Our Necks In It national tour this October and November. The tour celebrates the 1995 breakthrough hit Up To Our Necks In It, a track that helped Skunkhour break from the Sydney underground into national recognition.

Sydney’s Electric Pandas, the cult pop-rock outfit who made their mark in the mid-80s with one album and a hit song 'Big Girls', are officially back together. Lin Buckfield has revived the Pandas for 2025 with a refreshed line-up, and they’ll share the stage with James Reyne this November.

Melbourne/Naarm-based soul singer WILSN (aka Shannon Busch) has announced her second album, Bloom, set for release on 17 October 2025. Alongside the announcement comes the release of her heartfelt new single ‘GIRL’, an ode to the bonds of female friendship.

Melbourne's own Dallas Crane are back in the studio crafting their sixth studio album. In a nod to their signature blend of swagger and grit, they have already unveiled the lead single, “Trouble Knows My Name,” offering fans a raw taste of what's to come.

Four-time Grammy winner Keith Urban and the Tamworth Country Music Festival have unveiled the “Keith Urban Rising Star Scholarship,” an initiative primed to propel Australia’s next crop of country artists into the Nashville spotlight. The scholarship promises a career-changing journey, live performances, songwriting, industry meetings, and even two days recording at Urban’s own Nashville studio, The Sound (formerly the iconic Tracking Room).

Fire Records will release Long March Through the Jazz Age, the last recordings of Chris Bailey and The Saints, on 28 November 2025. The release will arrive just days after what would have been Bailey’s 69th birthday, serving as a poignant final chapter in the story of one of Australia’s most important and influential bands.