With thousands of indie bands fighting to break into the mainstream music scene it's harder than ever to get your foot in the door, something 2008 Indie award winners The Brent Flood have experienced first hand.

The Tooting band were named best Indie group at last year's celebrations and were immediately signed up to small south London record label The Animal Farm, but success on a bigger scale has so far eluded them.

"We are competing against tens of thousands of bands trying to do the same thing so it's hard to break through," says bassist Edward Stalsberg, who is joined in the group by Rob Chesterman, Dan Andreas Roth and Jay Marsh.

"We are fully aware we have chosen a career path that's pretty hard to achieve in, just making enough money to pay the rent is tough sometimes.

"It can be depressing but when we play a gig and there's 300 people signing along to something we wrote in our dingy basement it can be pretty exciting.

"There's not a timetable to these things and it's quite literally a one in a million chance but we must be doing something right if the fan base keeps growing steadily."

The band set up base in Tooting four years ago and currently rehearse in the old Young's brewery in Wandsworth.

Earlier this month they released their first EP, called Katy McCain, since joining The Animal Farm and they will be playing tracks from it at The Selkirk pub this Saturday as part of the three-day long musical festival South by SW17.

"We've decided to start building a local following because you can go to Camden and play any time but there will be 100's of other bands there too," says Ed.

"Katy McCain is the lead track on the EP and it's actually the name of a girl that used to work at the Selkirk as bar staff but it's not actually about her, it's just got a nice ring to it.

"It's a compilation of our songs that we have written over the years really that I guess you would call powerful, emotionally-charged pop gems."

South by SW17 is a three-day music festival run by Tracked in Tooting at The Selkirk from July 31 to August 2.

South by SW17 line-up:

Friday:

- Right Turn Left, The boy, the girl and all the world and THR.

Saturday:

- The Brent Flood, Swimming, Public Service Broadcasting, Toby Pellow and Moody McArdle.

Sunday:

- Little Things,Rokhsan Heydari, The Drop, The Fox and Bramble.

The Brent Flood, The Selkirk, Selkirk Road, August 1, 9pm, free. Visit myspace.com/wearetrackedintooting or thebrentflood.co.uk.