Heading to a foreign music festival used to guarantee a far more exotic experience than a weekend spent mukking it out at Glasto or Reading.

Along with the promise of decent weather and hordes of preening Eurotrash, you got to make shapes to your favourite bands with not a pasty-faced Brit in sight.

Now the big European music festivals are beginning to resemble Shoreditch-by-Sea, as clued-up Brit clubbers sleazy jet it out . The Sonar music festival, which starts tomorrow in Barcelona, is a case in point. Fortunately, there are a host of other alluring foreign events, where you can be safe in the knowledge that the revellers around you are not ad sales execs from Bromley. Here are the top three European festivals that you should know about:

HIPSTER CENTRAL
Dour Festival, Belgium - July 12-15
Belgium has been quietly asserting its hip credentials for a few years, and this four-day event brings together some of this year's hottest acts. Best of all, it's but a Eurostar hop away.
Acts include Digitalism, Hot Chip, Justice, The Rapture - 4 day pass EUR 75

CITY BREAK
Sziget, Hungary - August 8-15
This week-long event takes places on an island on the outskirts of Budapest, so enabling you to combine festival with city break. The varied selection of stages includes jazz and world music.
Acts include The Killers, Razorlight, Chemical Brother, Eric Truffaz - EUR 150