We are just a few days away from the most important music festival held annually within the city limits of Los Angeles. FYF Fest is scheduled for July 21-23, marking the first time in its 14 year history that the festival will stretch over three days. The lineup has already been announced and in an era of festivals offering diminishing returns with copycat lineups, the top billing of FYF starkly stands out as one of the year’s best. Now, the set times have been announced and festival goers can finally start crafting their dream schedules with some heartbreaking conflicts sure to arise.
From Missy Elliot and Bjork making for a unique Friday night headliner pairing, to the “will he or won’t he” of Frank Ocean, to the return of industrial legends Nine Inch Nails, there are not a lot of festivals that can match this Southern California institution. And it’s not just the headliners that are impressive at FYF Fest. Other mxdwn favorites litter the extremely deep roster, including A Tribe Called Quest, Erykah Badu, Iggy Pop, Solange, Anderson Paak and the Free Nationals, Run the Jewels, Flying Lotus – and that’s just the second two lines after the headliners! Unlike that other festival held way out in the desert of Coachella Valley, indie rock is still well-represented at FYF with artists like Angel Olsen (she’ll play to a significantly larger audience than her last appearance at the festival, when she had one of the opening slots and performed in front of a criminally-sparse group of music fans), Blonde Redhead, Ty Segall, Built to Spill, Thee Oh Sees, Temples, Beach Fossils and more.
Similar to the set-up of the last few years since moving from the Los Angeles State Historic Park adjacent to Chinatown to Exposition Park, FYF Fest will be divided between three major stages. The main stage is situated on a large patch of asphalt on the west side of the festival. The Trees and the Lawn are smaller, grassier stages with the former directly to the east of Memorial Coliseum and the latter squeezed between the famous football stadium and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. In addition to these stages, The Club and The Woods are joined by a new space, called Outer Space – these three stages are mainly aimed at fans of dance and electronic music.
Friday, July 21
Saturday, July 22
Sunday, July 23