The Darkness and The White Stripes are the big names out of the hat for the Carling Weekend Leeds Festival at Bramham Park, near Leeds, this summer.

Lowestoft retro rockers The Darkness will top the main stage bill on August 28 in the only chance to see the flamboyant East Anglians on a northern festival site this year. They will be backed by American nu-metal mob The Offspring; Ireland's Ash, whose new album, Meltdown, will take them in a heavier, darker direction; and The Hives, who will arrive from Sweden with a July album in tow.

Detroit's dynamite duo The White Stripes will headline on August 29, in a coup for the Carling Weekend organisers, who have signed up Jack and Meg White for their only British festival appearances of 2004 at Reading Festival on August 28 and Leeds the following night.

Better news still, cult star Morrissey, the former Smiths front man too long resident in California, will support the release of his comeback album, You Are The Quarry, with a main stage performance on August 29. Newly signed to Sanctuary, he has a single, English Blood, Irish Heart, raring to go.

The Libertines, with singer Pete Doherty back in the fold after last year's well-documented troubles, will be in action on August 29, as will the most fashionable Scottish band in years, Franz Ferdinand.

The Leeds festival will open on August 27 with festival perennials Green Day on top of the pile, promoting their new album, due out in July. Rapper 50 Cent is likely to cause more of a stir in his first ever British festival performance, and noisy Welshmen Lostprophets and British urban whizkid Mike Skinner's The Streets are confirmed for Friday slots too. The Streets' second album, A Grand Don't Come For Free, is imminent, preceded by the Club 18-30 inspired single Fit But You Know It.

Weekend tickets cost £105; day tickets £45. Tickets are available from Gateway Yorkshire, City Station, Leeds, for cash with no booking fee; Ticketmaster; credit card hotline 08701 500 044; or at www.meanfiddler.com and www.ticketmaster.co.uk

For postal bookings, send cheques or postal orders with stamped addressed envelope and daytime phone number to Leeds 2004, PO Box 1707, London NW10 4LW by August 8 (for cheques) or August 19 (postal orders). Postal ticket prices are £105.50/£45.50, including booking fee, plus £3.75 on bookings for four or more tickets to cover the cost of registered post.

Updated: 09:07 Friday, April 02, 2004