From sea to shining sea, here are the best festivals for indie music in the country.
Indie is a tough term to define. It’s more of a “know it when you see it,” situation, but broadly it’s music and artists that are a little outside or bubbling just underneath the mainstream. Rock can, of course, be indie, but there’s also indie hip-hop too, and indie poop. You can catch a variety of different indie acts at the big festivals around the country — Lollapalooza, Coachella, Bonnaroo, etc. — but that doesn’t necessarily make them indie festivals.
The hallmark of the great indie festivals around the country are that they are two-and-three day-long events filled with programming off the beaten path, that generally spurns those same three to five headliners you’re likely to see on every other major event going down in the summer. That also means a general dearth of shiny, major label acts you’ve never heard of padding out the lineup.
With all of that in mind here are the best indie music festivals around the country in 2018.
