This year's 15 Latvian Eurovision hopefuls revealed

The "Supernova" selection process will be helmed this year by Ketija Šenberga and Lauris Reiniks over two semi-finals and a final. Both in the semi-finals and the final, the acts progressing will be determined by  a combination of the audience's telephone votes calls and the jury's vote – though it is not without precedent for the jury to unilaterally decide things for themselves by means of a 'wildcard' if they so decide.

Speaking of the Byzantine workings of the jury, if you want to know who actually decided these were the best 15 songs... you can't, with organizers citing "security reasons".

"Entry of songs and performers into the semi-finals of the "Supernova" competition was determined by a jury selected by LTV, which includes representatives of the Latvian music industry, events and television, as well as foreign professionals. Due to security reasons, again this year LTV will reveal the names of the jury representatives only after the international Eurovision Song Contest in May," said organizers.

Strangely, there will be an odd number of contenders at the starting gate this year – 15 – which suggests the two semi-finals will not have equal numbers of participants in each. Latvia has failed to qualify for the Eurovision final for several years now, the last success being Justs in 2016, who finished 15th in the final. Latvia did win the contest once, back in 2002 with Marie N's "I wanna".

Nevertheless, the performers and the producers of the show remain as optimistic as ever and some of this year's acts are not competing for the first time. Particularly tenacious is Markus Riva, who's tried to win a shot at Eurovision repeatedly since 2014. Maybe this year is his?

All semi-final songs can be heard together on the competition website. The first semi-final of "Supernova" will take place February 4 at 21.10 on LTV1 and REplay.lv.

But without further mysterious maneuvers, these are the acts and the songs which will have a theoretical shot at Eurovision glory nad will be dreaming of a ticket to the finals in Liverpool, UK.

"24. Avēnija" – "You Said"