On Sept. 28, four alternative music bands will take to the stage on Central Campus at 7 p.m. and drown out the nightly bells of the Campanile with keyboards, electronic beat-makers, electric guitars and acoustics.

It is the third annual KURE-Fest, a free-of-charge music festival put on by KURE 88.5, an Ames alternative music radio station.

“This will be the biggest festival we’ve had yet,” said Darren Hushak, general manager of KURE 88.5. “It’s kind of different this year because it’s outside and is much larger. Last year, the headliner was Neon Indian, and the year before that — the festival’s first year — we had six local groups perform.”

Among this year’s headliners are two nationally recognized artists that are on the cutting edge of electronic music, Atlas Sound and RJD2.

RJD2, a one-man electronic band headed by Philadelphia-native Ramble John Krohn, has been a name in the underground electronic music scene for years but has recently made it big with the song “A Beautiful Mine,” the theme song for the critically acclaimed AMC TV show “Mad Men.”

Atlas Sound is the solo project of Bradford Cox, the lead singer for Deerhunter, a four-piece psychedelic indie rock band from Atlanta. Cox remains a functioning part of Deerhunter, but uses Atlas Sound as an outlet for his more ambient and experimental work.

Two Iowa bands are also performing at the festival — Des Moines band The River Monks and Ames band Christopher the Conquered.

Chris Ford, lead singer of the nine-piece indie band Christopher the Conquered, said he owes his inspiration to a wildly eclectic interest in music.

“I call my music progressive soul music. I’m really into the whole history of music — I pull a lot of influence from the more eclectic music of the ’70s,” Ford said. “Randy Newman is probably the biggest. I also love gospel music, New Orleans jazz and be-bop.”

The nine members of Christopher the Conquered have established a solid reputation as a staple of the Ames alternative music scene, since their official forming in 2008. Lead singer Ford built the band from scratch as a solo project back in 2006 and has since produced five albums and shared the stage with big-time artists such as Modest Mouse and Slightly Stoopid at the Des Moines 80/35 music festival in 2010.

The band has come a long way, but Ford said Ames is still their home base.

“The music scene here is the best it’s ever been. There’s a really open community of progressive and modern individuals who truly care, and egos are really hard to find,” Ford said. “The KURE giving local artists a chance like this is very meaningful.”

Des Moines folk-pop rockers, The River Monks, will also be playing at the festival. Guitar and banjo player Ryan Stier started the band in May 2010, and since then, the five-piece band has released one album and has been on five tours spanning the Midwest and southeast and southwest regions of the United States. The band has opened for artists such as The Lumineers as well as S. Carey of Bon Iver.

“We picked a good time to start being a band. We’ve had awesome opportunities, like being a part of the 80/35 festival. It’s been a really awesome time to be in Des Moines, not to mention Ames,” Stier said. “There’s been a growing effort to conjoin the two cities into one music scene.”

Along with free music, the festival will have merchandise stands, gyros from the Welch Avenue gyro stand and hotdogs from Super Dog.

“It’s a free music event, which is something that very rarely happens on campus,” Hushak said. “What KURE is trying to bring is free music but also music that might not be very well represented.”