Eurosonic happens every year in the pretty university town of Groningen in the Netherlands. It's a few hours by train from Amsterdam, and the first thing that hits when you come out of the station are the millions of bikes everywhere. The town is perfect for a festival of this kind, where around 140 bands play every day.

The festival brings in not only a lot of music fans to check out new and exciting European bands (including ones you'll know like The xx, Marina and the Diamonds and so on), but also a host of festival bookers and music industry types, too.

They come to see who is worth booking for the festival season ahead. As I learned from Robert, one such booker, this is how Franz Ferdinand got their European break. They played their first gig outside of the UK at Eurosonic and then went on to play loads of big festivals over the following summer.

This year, I was only at Eurosonic for one night, which started with checking out Ellie Goulding playing live. She's tipped for big things, of course, and her live gig is very good. She plays guitar and has a backing band of talented musicians who bring her more electronic songs to life. Tunes like Starry Eyed, her next single, sounded massive.

Jaakko & Jay come from Finland and are a punk rockin' drums and guitar duo. Their chugging riffs were awesome live, and they're off on tour with Frank Turner soon. They were probably the best thing I saw at Eurosonic this year.

Representing BBC Radio1 at the festival were Everything Everything. They played the BBC Introducing stage at Reading and Leeds last year and were good, but they were AWESOME in the Netherlands. With a sound of their own and haunting three part harmonies, full on electronica wig outs and an appetite for experimenting without scaring away, they played the huge Grand Theatre and got a massive reaction. They'll be gigging loads again this year and have their debut album planned, so make sure you check them out.





See more photos from Groningen and listen again to live highlights - including tracks from Everything Everything - on Huw's Radio 1 show.