If you follow any number of local and emerging artists on your social media stream, then prepare to see your feed blow up with Road To Bonnaroo announcements over the course of the next few weeks. Announced this morning, the first round of Road To Bonnaroo contestants is stacked deep. The lineup boasts a few acts featured in our year-end poll to your right but all eight artists are worth a listen.

The first round of acts will hit the Mercy Lounge stage on February 25th to compete for your vote to send them to Bonnaroo 2k13. The following two sets of bands are as yet unannounced, but you may as well mark your calendars now for March 25th and April 15th to watch Road To Bonnaroo, rounds two and three, also over at Mercy Lounge.

In the meantime, get to know the first eight of your 24 Road To Bonnaroo contestants:

Alanna Royale
DeRobert & the Half-Truths
Dylan McDonald
Five Knives
Grass Root Kids
Schools
Sol Cat
The Young International

For more information on the event, click here.

Three dudes wearing silver masks with sleeveless black hoodies, effeminate by a rad and sexy post screamo, blonde bombshell demon-chick – Nashville's Five Knives have an erotic aesthetic that fuses industrial power chords, hip hop undertones and a chemical pool of synthetic low fi swagger, upstaging the Yeasayer show downstairs. Many ticket buyers left Yeasayer sluggish midway into their set, filling the outdoor smoking porch to the brim and many eventually ditched, catching the second half of the raging Five Knives set upstairs in the newly renovated High Watt or meandering toward the Johnny Cash cover band Cash'd Out in Mercy. Birthday boy and High Watt manager, Brandon Jazz, struggled at the start of his performance earlier in the night and even dodged a cup of ice or two before Cherub's Jason Huber, who was also celebrating a birthday, joined him for a version of “In the Air Tonight” that miraculously brought the crowd in. After waiting around expecting one of the Yeasayer guys to step up to the DJ booth for a set upstairs, most of the crowd had grown tired of the night's attempts at shock value. The only thing not shocking about everything was Yeasayer, who have barely been able to re-master the energy of the tours following their 2007 SXSW breakout performance. – Dh Wright