Thor Christensen

The seventh Austin City Limits Music Festival announced its lineup today, and as usual, it's a mix of rock hipsters and grizzled veterans.

The former includes the Foo Fighters, Beck and the Raconteurs. Gnarls Barkley returns to the fest, which runs Sept. 26-28 at Zilker Park, while Erykah Badu makes her ACL debut.

The oldies camp features ex-Creedence singer John Fogerty, Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant (performing with Alison Krauss) and former Talking Head-master David Byrne.

"The philosophy is to keep it eclectic and well-balanced," says Charlie Walker of C3, the festival's Austin-based promoter. "As you book a Foo Fighters, you might go look for something to offset that, like a David Byrne."

For a list of all 125 acts, go to www.aclfestival.com.

Three-day passes are on sale at the Web site for $170, including service charges, up $25 from last year. A limited number of single-day tickets will be sold at a later date.

Since 2005, ACL has capped attendance at 200,000 "to make it a little more comfortable," says Mr. Walker. Last year, promoters installed sprinklers to combat the dust clouds that plagued the festival in '05 and '06.

But little can be done about the heat. Temperatures at ACL routinely hit the mid- to upper 90s, with a high of 108 recorded in 2005.

Every year, hundreds of fans stagger into ACL's medical tents suffering from heat exhaustion and dehydration. Yet there seems to be no shortage of fans willing to sweat and swelter. And promoters have no plans to move ACL to a cooler month.

"The availability of bands tends to be better for us in September than it would be later in the year," says Mr. Walker.

"We've had some bad luck with it being hotter than it's supposed to be," he said. "But we're a bit later in the month this year. Hopefully, we'll get a break."

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