Adelaide band The Touch is officially Australia’s hottest emerging music act, beating tough competition to be crowned the official winner of Nova’s I Am With The Band competition today.

Beating a staggering 1,065 bands that entered the competition through www.novafm.com.au, The Touch were told this afternoon by Nova’s Ryan, Monty & Wippa that they had won $10,000 as well as national airplay on Nova stations to help them along their journey to stardom.

Combining interlocking riffs of television with the electronic dance sounds of Bloc Party, The Touch was shortlisted by an industry-judging panel as one of the top ten bands in Australia.

The public then voted for their top five bands  which played special shows and encouraged as many fans to sign up to their profile page at www.novafm.com.au to help them win.

The Touch frontman Josh Moore says that the win will help open a lot of doors for the band and the money may go towards the release and distribution of an upcoming untitled EP.

“We’re very thankful for the opportunity that Nova gave us, you don’t often get a launchpad into the general public like that so we’re stoked – we’d like to thank everyone who voted and got behind us for the competition,” he says.

“We’ll now get the exposure that we want and it gives us a little bit more freedom to do what we want music wise.”

The Touch will now receive airplay on Nova stations across Australia as well as exposure on www.novafm.com.au