Before kicking off his one-hour set, the lead guitarist of Texas-based band Explosions in the Sky, Munaf Rayani, said something that pretty much sums up the basic premise of what a rock festival should be about.

"Hello, we are Explosions in the Sky. We are from Texas and if you don't know us, I guarantee by the end of our show you will like us," Rayani told the crowd.

Even for serious music buffs or music festival junkies, there was no way anyone knew all the bands or musicians whose names were printed on the program. It was only by chance that they would stumble upon interesting new acts and, just as Rayani said, they might just end up liking them -- and the 2008 Lollapalooza offered them in spades.

With dozens of bands performing, some of them simultaneously on different stages, there was no way to catch every performance -- and this sometimes involved making tough choices between Rage Against the Machine and Wilco, the Raconteurs and Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks, or Nine Inch Nails and Kanye West.

And if we are lucky enough, some of the little bands there could become the new darlings of rock.

Take the Colorado-based indie band DeVotchKa. Superficially, this band had very little business performing at Lollapalooza. The band's quirky blend of Eastern European, folk, punk and mariachi would in fact sit awkwardly alongside rock staples like Radiohead, Wilco and Rage Against the Machine.

Some in the crowd raised their eyebrows when DeVotchKa band members turned up on stage wearing black suits and carrying strange musical instruments including a piano accordion, a trombone, a theremin and bouzuki.

But, no sooner had multi-instrumentalist Tom Hagerman played the violin intro for "Such a Lovely Thing" off the band's debut How It Ends, the crowd knew they were in for a good ride.

Lead singer Nick Urata sang with an excessive dose of pathos -- enough to channel Morrissey circa Vauxhall and I.

And nearing the end of the one-hour show, the same crowd went wild when guitar-wielding Urata switched to his magician mode, crafting haunting theremin-based melodies as a coda for "The Enemy Guns", another single from How It Ends.

I am sure that right after their show ended, the majority of concertgoers went to a record booth to buy copies of DeVotchka's full-length albums. I did.

If DeVotchKa managed to charm the audience with their low-key attraction, Explosions in the Sky captivated music fans in their grandiose kind of way.

Fans probably know Explosions in the Sky for their masterful multiple-minute compositions of guitar-based melancholia with ringing and soaring melodies as their main currency -- mostly from the band's third album, The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place. And this is what the fans probably wanted at Lollapalooza.

But defying this expectation, Explosions in the Sky performed mostly songs from their debut album, the pretentiously titled Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever -- an album of guitar chaos.

For fifty-plus minutes, the band's three axmen worked industriously to paint a surreal sonic-scape, full of ear-splitting distortion and tremolos, yet this is the kind of attraction that drew adoration from the crowd.

DeVotchKa and Explosions in the Sky were among numerous indie acts that graced the main stages of Lollapalooza 2008. Canadian indie collective Broken Social Scene turned up for a show one hour after Explosions in the Sky at the Bud Light stage, one of two main stages at Lollapalooza. Indie rock prince Stephen Malkmus, formerly of Pavement, performed on the first day of the festival, right before Radiohead.

It seems indie is the new mainstream at Lollapalooza.

--M. Taufiqurrahman

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