Red Stripe Music Award Final With Dirty Pretty Things

The Red Stripe Music Award, the UK's widest search for the best unsigned music talent, reaches its climax on Monday 12 May with four finalists from across the UK battling it out for the Red Stripe crown, playing alongside the headliners, Dirty Pretty Things.

After 52 showcase gigs, in 32 different towns and cities, and performances from over 200 bands, Red Stripe reps have scoured the country for the very best of the UK's undiscovered talent. And now the line-up has been whittled down to just four bands who will fight it out for the coveted title of winners of the Red Stripe Music Award 2008.

Klaus Says Buy The Record: This Brighton based songsman is already renowned for his elastic live show, the rousing poet combining the utterly pop with the fantastically theatrical. His Jamie T spliced with Paul Heaton manner is a jocular and whimsically lyrical feast of menacing adolescent excitement with well-nourished flashes of Get Cape Wear Cape Fly.

Kiddo: This Edinburgh four-piece makes music so mischievously charming you're as carried away on their songs as you would be Good Shoes or dare we say, The Cure. Uber-catchy pop songs, delightfully delivered with a refreshing sense of on-stage cohesion.

The Down and Outs: Like Vampire Weekend, The Down and Outs know how to make a melody that wraps around your life, itching the sun-loving inner Beatles fan with a vocal jumble of lyrical whips so sharp they pierce the British weather with massive beams of musical sunlight.

O Fracas: We're still not a hundred per cent sure how to pronounce their name, but we do know that they make a different sound to most other bands in the UK. From the outlandish catchiness of their weirdo dark-pop to the undertone of vaudevillian vocals and pianos, they meet the oddball with the custom and make it sound belligerent.

High profile industry tastemakers - Stuart Clark from Music Week, Oli Hodgson from Coda and Will Kinsman from The Fly, will be making the final decision on the night, which will see one band being given the opportunity to play at two of the UK's best new festivals, The Great Escape festival in Brighton (15-17 May) and Lovebox Weekender (19-20 July), and they'll get their very own tour bus. Plus, there is the 'money can't buy' prize of exposure to some of the biggest names in the music industry.

These four disarming bands have been selected from over 1,000 applicants who applied online for this year's event, which went on to make the carefully selected 200 performing acts of the competition across 52 nights, starting way back in January 2008. The award was set up to champion real talent at its grass-roots stage and the final 200 were carefully researched by a team of Red Stripe and Barfly music-obsessed aficionados in an extensive A&R process to deliver what we hope should be an incredible night of rock 'n' roll.

You can apply for free tickets to this fantastic musical event taking place in The Forum on Monday May 12th, check out the ticket page on Ticket Master.

Find out more about the Red Stripe Music Award.

How to get there

The closest tube station is located at Kentish Town.

If travelling by bus the 24, 46, 134, 214, 393 and C2 all serve the area.