The fifth edition of the Outside Lands Music Festival got a hard date today: Friday, August 10th to Sunday, August 12th 2012. The festival's cartoonish park ranger mascot tweeted the announcement this morning and it doesn't really give us any clues about the 2012 lineup just yet, but that shouldn't keep us from wildly speculating about which artists will play in Golden Gate Park this August.

Judging from the first four years of the music fest, we think we can safely predict:

  • At least one jam band will play for an extremely long time one night.
  • Someone (possibly a rapper) will experience technical difficulties and/or raise a stink about the lineup.
  • One night will be headlined by a band everyone from the Mission will want to see, but no one will admit that they still enjoy.

As for more concrete predictions: we won't get our hopes up for another Radiohead set in Golden Gate Park. Thom Yorke and Company will wrap up their current North American tour in June before heading to Europe and Japan in July. (They do have an unscheduled month in August though — fingers crossed!) And there's a chance The Black Keys, who have been enjoying top billing at festivals for what seems like years now, could make their third appearance at Outside Lands.

But if this year's Coachella lineup in any indicator of who else is on the festival circuit this summer we could see an appearance from iPod commercial crooner Feist, the re-formed post-punk outfit At The Drive-In (yes, please!), a set from Montreal producer/wunderkind The Weeknd and 90s classics Mazzy Star - which might actually be kind of romantic out in the Polo Fields.

Those of you unconcerned with the lineup, but still hoping to secure cheap tickets to the Fest should know that Eager Beaver 3-Day Passes go on sale this Friday, March 16th at Noon for a reasonable $165.