Christine and the Queens announces artists for 2023 Meltdown festival

Christine and the Queens has announced the artists who will be performing at this year’s Meltdown festival, which he is curating.

Taking place at London’s Southbank Centre, 9-18 June, Christine and the Queens promised “art to save the city – to free its contours and enliven the soul”, and will himself perform twice on the closing weekend.

Icelandic band Sigur Rós, who release their first album in a decade the same month, will open their European tour with a concert backed by London Contemporary Orchestra.

African artists are well represented, with a concert featuring major Nigerian star Yemi Alade with support from South Africa’s Moonchild Sanelly, and another from Oxlade, the Nigerian singer who had a global hit last year with Ku Lo Sa.

British alt-pop mainstays Bat For Lashes and Django Django both feature, the latter performing in the Royal Festival Hall to launch their new four-album project Off Planet. Also performing in Royal Festival Hall will be US indie rockers Warpaint and British jazz octet Kokoroko.

Let’s Eat Grandma, Serpentwithfeet and Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs will all perform in the foyer of Queen Elizabeth Hall. The hall itself will host Sqürl, the US drone-rock trio featuring film director Jim Jarmusch; Johnny Jewel, the Los Angeles synth musician known for his groups Chromatics, Desire and Glass Candy; and flamboyant electro-pop vocalist Lynks. The Austrian alt-pop singer Soap&Skin will play a concert in the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room.

The Meltdown curation is part of a busy spell of activity for Christine and the Queens, AKA Héloïse Letissier (who began publicly using male pronouns in 2022). The French pop singer adopted the stage name Redcar for his third album, Redcar les adorables étoiles, released in November, with the “second part of an operatic gesture”, the album Paranoia, Angels, True Love, coming in June with Madonna among the guest artists.

Christine and the Queens is the latest star name to curate Meltdown, following Grace Jones in 2022 and artists including David Bowie, Ornette Coleman and Yoko Ono across its 30-year history.