Last summer, Luis Felber was stood in a London park watching his friends, the band Fontaines D.C., play their biggest headline show to date – and daydreaming of a main-stage moment of his own. Minutes later, he received a text that would change his life. It came from the former Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore, who had listened to Felber’s latest album Experience in one sitting and was messaging to share his deep appreciation of the record.

Felber started to cry. “People in the crowd must have thought, ‘Wow, this guy must really love this [Fontaines D.C.] song…’ I mean, I did love that song, but I was having a moment for different reasons.”

The text exchange led to Moore signing the 39-year-old artist to his independent label Daydream Library and, in turn, a string of live shows and listening sessions. The internet is awash with clips of Moore taking to the stage to thrash out Felber’s tracks with him. “To get recognition from someone like Thurston Moore feels like such amazing validation,” Felber says. “He’s one of the true musical greats.”

It has been a long road to get here. The British-Peruvian musician has spent the better part of two decades shaping his craft on his own terms; weaving together psyche-pop, folk and textured indie into his strikingly singular sound.

“When I started out, I often felt there was a me-shaped hole in the music industry,” Felber says. “I had a band called The Eraserheads. We loved going to a club night called Frog, but all the bands that were getting booked were like, Bloc Party, Rakes, Larrikin Love. We didn’t really fit into that, so we started our own club night called Young Turks. It created a space where we could perform and meet people.”

Young Turks became a stalwart of London’s 2000s indie music scene, platforming new talent and incubating young bands. It eventually evolved into the record label Young, now home of The xx, Robyn and Sampha.

Yet, it is under the moniker Attawalpa, a nod to the outlier Inca ruler and one of Felber’s middle names, that he has really settled into his sound. Felber’s melodies are sprawling and cinematic, his lyrics a kaleidoscopic voyage through love, loss, hope, disappointment, elation and addiction.

Getting sober in 2018 unlocked a creativity in Felber that he had not felt in years. “The reason I became sober was to connect more with myself and to not be so disassociated,” he says. “Because that’s what I would use substances for. For me, it’s a superpower to not have to do that.”

Felber credits therapy, EDMR, acupuncture, five-a-side football and, of course, creating music as key to keeping himself well.

One of Felber’s most cathartic projects to date came last summer: the critically acclaimed, Netflix series Too Much, which he co-created with his wife, the actor, director, writer and producer Lena Dunham. Felber wrote on an episode (a first), composed the score and curated the soundtrack, which features tracks that he and Dunham would exchange on playlists for each other in the early days of their relationship.

Working with Dunham, Felber says, was a study in greatness. “Lena is a master of her craft,” he says. “She is such an incredible partner, such an incredible friend, such an incredible wife, but also such an incredible teacher. I always thought I had ‘worked’ with Lena because I’d do the scores. But on Too Much, we were both in the driver’s seat. Or she was in the driver’s seat and I was in the front seat, directing when we got lost. Is that a good analogy?”

Felber worked closely with the show’s lead actor, Will Sharpe (Amadeus, The White Lotus), on his character Felix, the frontman of an indie band. Sharpe belts out a version of Felber’s exquisite track “True Love Trajectory” in the show’s final episode.

This year brings a string of tipping-point projects for Felber, kicking off with the release of his Experience Remix EP, a dance-focused reworking of a handful of key tracks from the album. Then, later this summer, comes another Felber-Dunham collab, Good Sex (the screenplay for which sparked a giant bidding war between major studios), starring Natalie Portman, Mark Ruffalo and Meg Ryan.

Felber and his writing partner Matt Allchin have once again written the score. “Lena was throwing around the term ‘East Village vibe’ a lot [in pre-production],” Felber says. “Matt and I thought it would be cool to go to New York and record there. We are obsessed with this recording studio called Diamond Mine… where Clairo and Geese have recorded.”

In autumn, Felber will release his third Attawalpa album, a “deeply personal” one, he says. Not only does Thurston Moore feature, but Felber sings in Spanish for the very first time. “Singing in Spanish has opened up another part of my brain and personality,” Felber says. The record’s mood? “It is angry at the state of the world, yet I hope it can spread joy, calm, love and some laughter as well.”

It’s a good story. A skinny teenager, born in Uganda and raised in Newcastle, moves down to the big city with a microphone and a dream. He busks for change during the day and plays in a wedding band by night, rattling around the country in the back of a van, singing the standards to half-empty rooms or, sometimes, rooms that are just empty.

He writes songs, hones his craft, toughens up. A 10-second clip of him stood outside of Trafalgar Square, belting out “Take Me To Church” by Hozier, becomes his first taste of viral fame. He uploaded it, went to make some pasta, and by the time it was finished, it had clocked a million views.

Soon, Victor Ray goes from playing to a couple of intrigued punters outside of a high-street shop to selling out London shows and touring the US. Modern fame moves quickly; you need to be ready to grab it.

“It’s what makes my journey unique, I think,” Ray says. “I never expected for busking to be the thing that got me noticed. I did it because I loved it and I couldn’t play the gigs that I wanted to at the time. It was a happy accident.”

At 26, Ray has gone from a TikTok sensation to a legitimate recording artist. With a voice like his – powerful, soulful, the sort of voice that can go viral in seconds – it’s hardly a surprise that he’s been able to make the transition. “I was never shy about wanting to become a singer,” he says. “My friends were all supportive, but no one around me was that into music. As soon as I could, I said, ‘Let’s find some bars, let’s find some pubs, let’s perform wherever will have me.’”

While his ascent feels contemporary, Ray is proud to have followed in the great tradition of countless other self-taught, jobbing musicians. It takes a lot of time and hard work to blow up overnight. “I think, nowadays, with the state of music, being able to perform live, and having a passion for it, is almost a rarity,” he says. “Most young artists are in their rooms making songs, which is great, but performance is something that requires practice. I think it’s lucky it happened that way for me.”

Last year, Ray released I Am, a collation of his four EPs so far, along with a short documentary that covers his unorthodox rise to success. “It felt like a chance to make sense of everything that’s happened over the past few years and round off that chapter.

“Weirdly, considering how fast this has happened, I haven’t felt any external pressure,” he adds. “I’m the one who puts pressure on myself. There were so many days when I didn’t want to go busking; I didn’t want to perform, or write, or record, but I was harsh on myself. By the time people were asking things of me, I had already built that rhythm and self-discipline. I had those expectations of myself. Not to waste this opportunity. Now I just feel like the luckiest guy in the world.”

“I have a list of people that I’m not allowed to meet,” says Mark Bowen, the 39-year-old guitarist, songwriter and producer for Idles. “Both the Kims” are on it. “Kim Deal, Kim Gordon. PJ Harvey. Nick Cave’s on there. Warren Ellis was on there.” Warren Ellis is the reason Bowen has the list. “The Bad Seeds were playing a festival we were playing in Belgium,” Bowen says. “And after the show, he was there, eating these big blueberry pies. And Joe [Talbot, Idles’ lead singer] was like: ‘You have to go over and talk to him’.

“I went over and I just had verbal diarrhoea,” Bowen says of this pinch-me moment. “Completely starstruck, shaking. From then on, I was like, ‘I’m never doing that again.’” Now, whenever he can’t avoid other festival headliners, he tries to stay “super chill”, he says. “I can scream into my pillow afterwards.”

The thing is, not meeting your idols is easier when you’re not in Idles. Since forming in Bristol in 2009, the post-punk outfit have earnt themselves a following that can no longer be dismissed as “cult”.

“I think we manage to be both cool and uncool at the same time, which really works in our favour,” Bowen says. “We’re not so super-cool that we seem unattainable. But we’re also – and I consider this with all lack of humility – one of the best live bands in the world. I think people are drawn to that.”

“People” not just being fans, but a string of collaborators, everyone from LCD Soundsystem to Tom Morello to The Streets and recently Gorillaz. “Jack White was on stage with us in Chicago a few weeks ago,” Bowen says. “He’s my actual hero. And he asked me for a photo, you know?”

Last year, the band also scored the soundtrack to Darren Aronofsky’s recent film, Caught Stealing. The opportunity came after a chance meeting. “He was a guest on Jimmy Fallon when we were on,” Bowen says. “We always just assume that no one’s heard of us because we’re, you know, moderately niche. But he popped his head in the dressing room, singing one of our songs. Turns out he’s a massive fan.”

Bowen’s own skillset has brought him on the radar of other acts, too. Last year, he co-wrote and produced tracks for Florence + the Machine’s album, Everybody Scream. (He also features in the title track’s folk-horror video, where he meets a gristly fate thanks to Florence Welch’s stiletto heel.)

His approach to music production has developed over Idles’ five albums to date. “It’s less about the band performing gigs in front of people and more like we record the music, then we work out how to translate that into a live set afterwards,” he says. “And how we’re going to make it slap hard.”

Bowen calls out, by name, the Dries Van Noten trousers he is photographed here wearing for praise. And while that might class him as a menswear guy, he has been known for other sartorial exploits.

“The pants are always a big one,” he says of early live shows that saw him perform in just his underwear. “It was a bit to rile people up, but also, I didn’t want to get my clothes wet.”

Then there are the dresses. “When we’re on tour, especially in America, I’ll just go to the thrift store in town and find some old prom dresses,” he says. “Like a shiny, pink-peach ballgown. I treated myself to a Jean Paul Gaultier for Glastonbury.” And a friend of his sourced him a “really class Issey Miyake” piece in purple for the Grammys. “That’s probably my favourite dress,” he says.

The style reference he pulls out is Brad Pitt, at his Fight Club peak, who was famously shot in a series of dresses for a 1999 issue of Rolling Stone magazine. “I’m acutely aware that I’m not the specimen Brad Pitt is,” Bowen says. “You know, I’m on stage. There’s a lot of lights and misdirection.”

The thing about Hak Baker is that he tells it how it is. The 35-year-old east London artist is brutally honest and refreshingly vulnerable. He sounds like he’s lived a few lives already – and that might be why labels have struggled to keep up with him.

“I’m not trying to be anybody else but Hak,” he says. “Especially now. I love being Hak. And I feel like [my music] is still sitting comfortably in its own lane, as it should.”

Baker was born and raised on the Isle of Dogs – “a Windrush baby”, he says – with music as a constant, from being a choirboy at Southwark Cathedral to reaching number one in Channel U’s video chart with his grime group, Bomb Squad, aged just 14. He then learnt to play guitar while he was in prison, where his name was pulled out of a hat for the chance to take part in music classes. However, his sound has always swerved away from simple categorisations.

He’s established his own genre – a blend of grime and folk – and called it “G-folk”. “Folk is someone that sings songs of his time and where he’s from,” he says. “That’s what I do. I’m a troubadour and I sing about me and my friends, in our area and our time. I just G it up a little.”

That sincerity runs through everything he does. Baker’s breakthrough release, Misfits (2017), speaks of mental health, helplessness and political frustration, but also having fun and lad culture with an unpolished tenderness that’s becoming rare in British music. His 2022 debut album, World’s End FM, strengthened his position as a singular voice narrating the reality of the culture wars of London and his own world, but still looking inward, as concerned with himself as he is with systems of power.

Community is a concept he returns to often through his work. The love for and from the community he grew up in – “it’s been the same people forever” – and the one that shaped him deeply when he was serving time, that he’s giving back to by hosting workshops, music classes and talks with inmates. “The most important thing is the conversation,” he says. “Because I understand what it means to be on that trajectory of negativity. I get what it’s like to think outside the box when you don’t want to be told what to do – you can choose to be what you want.”

Then there’s the community that he has grown – “2017 or 2018 was a real turning point,” he says. “We did a show at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club and both nights sold out immediately. All the young boys and girls came out and we had a great two-day bender.”

There are also his other ventures. Reef House beer, the first Black-owned lager, which he produces with two friends and is now stocked in nine locations across the UK. And he’s bought out Bon-Bleu, the 1990s streetwear label, which he’s reviving with a friend. The latter has him thinking about the way he dresses.

“People have already made a subtle judgement without you saying anything,” he says. “So, when I sound like I do, it’s a bit of a conundrum anyway.”

These days, his performances are mostly sober (“a big change for me”). He longs for a routine. And he’s learning how to produce his own work. “In a good and bad way, when you work with people, that sound becomes ever so slightly diluted,” he says. “So, I want to be in complete control of that, I want to make my own music.”

After a series of performances with Babyshambles – whose unswerving approach to self-expression is akin to his own – he’s now working on his next album, which will be out at some point in 2026. “The main difference is that I’ve forgotten about being a boy or a man child,” he says. “And I’m now comfortably sitting in a seat, ascertaining to be a gentleman.”

The sun is setting on the last day of Glastonbury 2025. The Maccabees guitarist Felix White is on stage with his newly reunited band. A whole decade has passed since they last played this legendary music festival. No one knew it back in 2015, but it would be one of their final shows before the band announced their split.

This time around, anthems like “Latchmere”, “X-Ray” and “Pelican” take on a whole new life, as the 50,000-strong crowd chant the lyrics back, word for word. “It felt like all the music we’d made when we were younger was almost waiting for us to be older,” the 41-year-old says. “Like it had to be left alone in order to really be played properly. It is cool to be old enough now to receive a moment like that and really take it in.”

Few bands survive a seven-year split like The Maccabees have. But, for White and his bandmates, time apart has brought much-needed perspective to their second coming. “We were kids when we started,” White says. “I see now it was sort of a necessity to go and find out who you actually are without that other person. Seeing each other again as old yet new friends… There is a new level of respect.”

It’s hard to overstate what an integral part The Maccabees played in shaping indie music as we now know it. The raggedy riffs and stripped-back production of their debut, Colour It In, bloomed into something altogether more cinematic and soaring by their last album, Marks To Prove It. Over 15 years, the band released four chart-topping albums, won countless awards and shared stages with the likes of The Strokes, PJ Harvey, even Bob Dylan, before abruptly calling it quits at their zenith.

White describes himself as “completely heartbroken” in the wake of the split. “I remember feeling really scared,” he says. “If I wasn’t the guitarist in The Maccabees, who was I? I didn’t know what I was going to do. I felt like there was going to be a lot of adrenaline missing in my life; routine, purpose, all of that…”

What followed for White was a rebirth of sorts. He co-founded Yala! Records (the name is a homage to his Palestinian grandmother), a way to platform new artists he admired. He re-entered the studio, this time as lead vocalist, to record an album with his new band, 86TVs, alongside his two brothers, Will and Hugo (also of The Maccabees) and former Noisettes drummer Jamie Morrison. A follow-up album is on the cards.

Yet it is White’s sports punditry – writing, commentating and co-hosting on Tailenders, the BBC’s “loosely cricket-based” podcast with Greg James and retired cricket legend Jimmy Anderson – that has helped cement his National Treasure status.

“This sounds melodramatic, but I do feel Tailenders saved me in lots of ways,” he says. “When it started, we all just thought it was going be a few episodes, but it snowballed in a way that kicked my life into a different place, which I’ll always be grateful for.”

This career segue paved the way for White’s 2021 debut book, It’s Always Summer Somewhere. Part memoir, part ode to cricket, White explores the ways the sport has mirrored his greatest moments of grief, elation, heartache and more. Or, as he puts it, “writing about sport, but actually not writing about sport at all”.

It is unflinching, vulnerable and at times feels as if you’re a fly on the wall in one of his therapy sessions. “The memoirs I’ve loved are when I feel someone’s giving me something that you sense they might not even be able to tell their closest friends,” White says. “I feel like there’s no point writing if I wasn’t being completely open.”

Last October, White released the critically acclaimed follow-up, Whatever Will Be, Will Be. Again, part memoir, part love letter to football and his team, Fulham FC. “Putting that almost feminine voice inside the male sports world is interesting to me. Someone might be reading it to read about sport but be caught off-guard.”

White has more book ideas in the pipeline, but for now studio sessions and rehearsals are calling. In July, The Maccabees return to Alexandra Palace, the place where they played their farewell show in 2017 – as well as playing a string of dates across the UK.

“I clung very tight to The Maccabees, maybe too tight,” White says. “I have learnt that life goes on beyond the band. I think, maybe we can walk back into it without it being everything – and that might be beneficial for the music.”

He insists things will be different this time. “Coming back down to Earth after stepping offstage is hard,” he says. “But I’m trying to let it just be a moment like all other moments are. Although, I can never help thinking, ‘I might die tomorrow – let’s make this count’.”