Autumn Leaves Festival 2025

On November 21 and 22, 2025, the Autumn Leaves Festival enters its 19th edition and once again brings subtle singer/songwriter and indie pop music to the Orpheum Extra in Graz. And this year, too, we are looking forward to an exciting and varied program.

Icelandic singer-songwriter Júníus Meyvant combines soulful arrangements with warm folk and Nordic melancholy. His debut album “Floating Harmonies” not only brought him critical acclaim, but also the Icelandic Music Award as “Newcomer of the Year”. Meyvant impresses live with his charismatic appearance, opulent arrangements and haunting vocals.

Willy Mason grew up in a family of musicians on Martha’s Vineyard and was signed to Conor Oberst’s label Team Love at the age of just 19. With his debut album “Where the Humans Eat” (2004), he not only landed in the UK charts, but quickly became one of the great voices of contemporary folk rock. His songs combine classic Americana influences with political awareness and introspective depth and tell of departure, resistance and everyday life between hope and doubt. After several albums, tours with the likes of Radiohead, Beth Orton, Death Cab for Cutie and Mumford & Sons and a lengthy creative break, he made an impressive comeback in 2021 with the album “Already Dead”.

The Hidden Cameras were founded around frontman Joel Gibb in Toronto in the early 2000s and attracted attention early on with their unique combination of chamber pop, queer aesthetics and provocative performance art. Their debut “The Smell of Our Own” (2003) is considered a milestone of queer music, carried by orchestral arrangements, anthemic choruses and a clear commitment to radical openness. The Hidden Cameras have toured worldwide, worked with artists such as Feist and Rufus Wainwright and continue to fuse music, art and activism in an unmistakable way to this day.

Behind Dressed Like Boys is Belgian musician Jelle Denturck, who explores the boundaries between indie pop, electronica and performance art with his solo project. His sound is both fragile and intense, characterized by introspective lyrics, reduced beats and an unmistakably emotional voice. His music is about personal experiences, queer identity, closeness and alienation – topics that he addresses with great openness and emotional depth. Dressed Like Boys is not only convincing musically, but also as an overall aesthetic concept – sensitive, courageous and completely independent.

The Austrian indie folk musicians DuoLia – Alia Wüschner and Julia Jackel – were founded at the beginning of 2020 and wonderfully combine delicate guitar and violin sounds with finely tuned two-part vocals. Their songs tell of personal experiences, inner upheavals and the desire for emotional clarity – always with a melancholy warmth and poetic depth.