The St Jerome's Laneway Festival is back, as intimate and boundary-pushing as ever.    Featuring a quality line-up pitched straight to the heart of discerning music fans, the boutique street party delivers a collection of bands.

With inspired city locations around the country, an indie cinema, art installations, ten pin bowling, boutique fashion markets and cocktail bars, the 2009 Laneway Festival will give music fans a full day of sonic revelation.  Laneway is and has always been about discovery, about seeing the bands before they explode.

First up on the lineup for the event is the one-man party-starter Girl Talk defies anyone to stand still during his electric live sets. 
Following the breakthrough success of his 2006 release Nightripper, the former biomechanical engineer (Gregg Gillis) has traveled the world inducing feverish masses of dancers to surround Gillis as he triggers samples and create mixes new and old out of loops from his laptop. His latest record Feed the Animals contains 300 samples meticulously meshed together to create an art form that surpasses the ubiquitous remixes and mash-ups that can be found all over the internet. 

Seminal UK band Stereolab head to our shores for the first time in six years to play at the Laneway Festival.  The band has produced some of the most consistent, experimental and downright beautiful records of the past 17 years, elevating them to company of legendary acts such as Yo La Tengo and Sonic Youth.  Led by Timothy Gane and vocalist Laetitia Sadier, the cult band will be trying out tracks from Chemical Chords, their Motown-flavoured release of 2008 along with tunes from their extensive back catalogue. 

Architecture In Helsinki raised the bar with last year's groundbreakingn album Places Like This.  Since playing at the first ever Laneway Festival five years ago in Melbourne, they have become one of our most valuable indie exports. Fans from all over the world have been won over by their joyous, schizophrenic, wildly fun sound.

The Hold Steady Brooklyn band made a memorable appearance at the festival a few years ago. They'll be featuring music from their latest release Stay Positive.

The Drones have had a steady ascent to recognition here and around the world as one of Australia's most exciting bands. Driven by frontman Gareth Liddiard's incendiary vocals, their debut album Havilah picked up the inaugural Australian Music Prize. Cut Off Your Hands have come a long way since they made their Laneway debut a few years back in their former incarnation as Shaky Hands.  Now based in the UK, the unstoppable New Zealand four-piece deliver intense live shows.

Four Tet (Kieran Hebdon) is a visionary who consistently pushes the boundaries of contemporary electronica.  Drawing on harps and folk instruments as well as crisp hip-hop breaks and experimental jazz, Four Tet is a musical renegade whose recorded output has won him a legion of fans.  His latest album Ringer has earnt him critical acclaim from artists such as Thom Yorke, Badly Drawn Boy, Beth Orton and Battles. Tame Impala are a Perth psychedelic rock trio fresh from the release of their debut EP. They're setting out on the road in the company of Yeasayer, You Am I and MGMT. 

Other bands performing on the day are El Guincho, Buraka Som Sistema, Jay Reatard, The Temper Trap, No Age, The John Steel Singers, Canyons, Pivot, Port O'Brien, Holly Throsby, Born Ruffians, Mountains in the Sky, Tim Fite, Still Flyin', Daeldelus and more soon to be announced. The Laneway Festival will be heading to Fortitude Valley in Brisbane on January 31, Melbourne on February 1, the Perth Cultural Centre, Northbridge on February 6, Fowler's Live, Adelaide on February 7 and The Basement, Sydney on February 8.

Tickets go on sale October 27.