11 Artists We Can’t Wait to See at Pitchfork Music Festival 2024

This weekend, Pitchfork Music Festival will be returning to Chicago’s Union Park for three days of incredible music. As Paste and Pitchfork tend to dig the same artists, we’re excited that so many of our faves are going to be taking the Red, Blue and Green stages Friday through Sunday. Former cover stars, Best of What’s Next picks and year-end list alums—like Water From Your Eyes, Jeff Rosenstock, Sweeping Promises, Hotline TNT, MUNA and Brittany Howard are set to perform. But they aren’t the only ones we’ll be in the pit watching this weekend. Check out the Paste music staff’s 11 most-anticipated sets below.

Jessica Pratt

In May, Los Angeles singer-songwriter Jessica Pratt dropped one of the year’s best albums, Here in the Pitch. Much of Here in the Pitch attempts to reckon with time and all of its charms, disasters and unknowns. Whether that’s done through nods to a post-psychedelic haze on “World on a String,” through horn placements that echo the sounds, sights and ashy hues of the speakeasies that Los Angeles miscreants might have stumbled into four, maybe five decades ago, or lines like “I soon should know what remains / I never was what they called me in the dark / I never was / Here I sit so long”—it’s obvious that Pratt has never felt more comfortable in her own ambitions, a truth most prominently on display throughout a track like “Get Your Head Out,” which shimmies between the vibes of dimly lit hotel soirées and “in the stars waiting ‘til love’s aligned.” On Here in the Pitch, it’s as if Pratt is walking with us down the Yellow Brick Road, but the cobblestone quakes with bitumen smacked by traces of romance and horror that, on their own can be quite maddening but, here, make for some adventurous, Great American Songbook-worthy shapes. On her current tour, she’s already started filling large halls with her sparse, haunting sound. It’s the kind of music that is applicable to any venue, and Union Park will likely be no different. —Matt Mitchell

Read our Digital Cover Story on Jessica Pratt here.

Mannequin Pussy

After being front row for their last of three sold out homecoming shows at Union Transfer (complete with a balloon drop), I could not be more excited to see Mannequin Pussy take the festival stage on Sunday. The live presence of frontwoman Missy Dabice is consistently gripping and electric, especially on heavier tracks like “I Got Heaven” and “OK? OK! OK? OK!” Their recent fourth LP, I Got Heaven, has been one of my favorite releases of this year, expertly displaying Mannequin Pussy’s artistic range. Even at 5 PM on a festival’s final day, I trust that they will absolutely bring every ounce of their energy to Chicago. —Leah Weinstein

Read our 2024 interview with Mannequin Pussy here.

Kara Jackson

A year out from the release of her stunning debut album Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love?, Kara Jackson is repping the hometown contingent of Pitchfork Festival’s 2024 lineup. I’ll be one of many gathered around the Green Stage on Saturday afternoon for her set of dulcet, world-weary folk tunes. WDTEGPTL? has soundtracked many of my long walks and late-night contemplations over the past year, and I’m looking forward to hearing the life they’ll take on in a live setting. Tracks like “rat,” “pawnshop” and “dickhead blues” unwind like magic spells, the gradual swell of their instrumentation mingling with Jackson’s pliable vocals to create something cosmic, and I can’t wait to see how these songs shine when Jackson takes the stage. —Grace Robins-Somerville

L’Rain

On Day Two, L’Rain will kick off the Red Stage festivities by playing songs from her critically-acclaimed 2023 album, I Killed Your Dog. I Killed Your Dog is a record that is as challenging as it is beautiful, and it’s a heroic continuation of Taja Cheek’s breakthrough sophomore LP Fatigue. A user on Reddit in a discussion post about the album even wrote “I want to like it! I just find it a bit…hard to listen to” upon its release last year. But to make your way through all 16 tracks of I Killed Your Dog is to step into a world that is non-linear, and one that dares to shake up your preconceptions about what delicacy might sound like when it gets plugged into more than a dozen colors, shapes and names. Cheek has been prominent in the Brooklyn music scene for more than 10 years, playing in bands like Throw Vision after graduating from Yale in 2011 and adopting the L’Rain moniker in the mid-2010s—when she released her eponymous debut album in 2017 via a local label called Astro Nautico. In the six years since, Cheek has been deliberately chipping away at defining her sound—which, at its core, holds no label or focused distinction. She puts out hit after hit and even found a spot on the recent I Saw the TV Glow soundtrack. The work of L’Rain is, famously, work that never slows down or stands still. Her set on Saturday afternoon is going to wow you. —Matt Mitchell

Read our Digital Cover Story on L’Rain here.

De La Soul

At the Red Stage on Saturday, the greatest rap trio of all time is going to take the stage. De La Soul, who are celebrating the 35th anniversary of their 1989 debut album 3 Feet High and Rising (which cracked the Top 50 of our recent greatest albums of all time list), are the big Day Two highlight for me—and I really hope the Pitchfork Festival crowd gives them the crowd environment they deserve. Tucked in-between feeble little horse and Carly Rae Jepsen, De La Soul are in company with Grandmaster Flash and Alanis Morissette as the “throwback” acts at the fest but, since the passing of Trugoy the Dove, Posdnuos and Maseo have stayed busy—touring with Ice Cube and the Wu-Tang Clan over the last year. The chance to see “The Magic Number” performed live in my lifetime is the defining pursuit of my weekend altogether. Even if they don’t play it, being in the company of De La Soul is a gift. —Matt Mitchell

Sudan Archives

What can’t singer, songwriter, rapper, producer and violinist Brittany Parks do? It’s a question I find myself asking whenever I throw on her sonically and thematically vast 2022 album Natural Brown Prom Queen and let myself wash away in its grooves. I can only imagine how much more of this record there is to love when it’s played live; I’m imagining the vibration of speakers and the seismic back-and-forth bounce of a crowd entranced by “OMG Britt,” the sweaty disco frenzy of “Freakalizer,” the strings of Parks’ violin trembling as she carves out the opening notes of “TDLY (Homegrown Land),” intimate opener “Home Maker” blooming through its honey hook to the chants of its sharp, percussive outro—“Don’t you feel at home when you’re with me?” Sudan Archives has been on my Pitchfork Festival wishlist. Her set is definitely one you won’t want to miss. —Grace Robins-Somerville

Lifeguard

About a year ago, I saw Lifeguard at another hometown show. They played to an audience of, at most, a hundred people squished in-between the stacks at Reckless Records in Wicker Park on a brutally hot summer afternoon. Their jagged post-punk drowned the entire room in earsplitting distortion, and I’m eager to see them perform that same rapidfire battery on the eardrums of the early birds as they kick off Day Two at the Green Stage. Part of the Hallogallo collective with bands like Horsegirl, Free Range, Friko, Dwaal Troupe and Sharp Pins (and even sharing members with some of these bands), Lifeguard are geared up to represent a new and innovative generation of Chicago’s punk scene. —Grace Robins-Somerville

feeble little horse

After canceling their summer 2023 tour, Pittsburgh’s feeble little horse tranquilized the disbandment rumors by hitting the festival circuit this year, which they started with an opening set at Coachella. The band’s sophomore record Girl with Fish has been in heavy rotation in my household over the past several months, as it’s grown on me a tremendous amount since its initial release last year. There’s a charm and wit to the band’s unique blend of noise pop, slacker rock and every other genre I can’t succinctly explain to my parents that makes Girl with Fish so compelling, and I could not be more excited to see that play out this weekend. I probably won’t be able to resist their Lincoln Hall aftershow either, if it means getting to sing the chorus of “Slide” (“Did I make it worse trying to sympathize?”) at the top of my lungs twice in the same day. —Leah Weinstein

Read our 2023 interview with feeble little horse here.

Carly Rae Jepsen

From what I can remember, the crowd energy at Carly Rae Jepsen’s Lollapalooza set last summer was carried on the backs of me and a handful of other internet gays. That being said, I’m optimistic the Pitchfork Festival crowd will be far more attentive and appreciative of Carly’s pop perfection. At the very least, I know the Paste staff will be holding down the fort. Jepsen has been switching up her setlists at her various festival appearances this summer, so I’ll be manifesting to the pop Gods that she plays “Bad Thing Twice” from The Loneliest Time and “Your Type” from Emotion (a record so good it made our recent greatest of all time list). —Leah Weinstein

billy woods & Kenny Segal

Few musicians had the kind of 2023 that billy woods had. The New York rapper popped up on tracks by Aesop Rock and Noname, released another perfect album with is buddy E L U C I D as Armand Hammer and, a few months earlier, fucked around and dropped a second full-length collaboration with producer Kenny Segal. Listening to Maps, it becomes evident that the two men have learned how to play to each other’s strengths. Segal knows that woods can make hay with any beat no matter how twisted or spiky, and woods knows to let those beats breathe and evolve before stomping through them. In interviews, woods called the album a “hero’s journey.” In that case, it’s akin to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours or Dante’s Inferno—a long day’s journey into the inner circles of hell, meeting gentrifiers, dodging wildfires and daring to down a glass of New York tap water upon his return. Seeing both woods and Segal grace the Green Stage on Friday is going to be one of the best sets of the entire weekend. —Robert Ham & Matt Mitchell

Wednesday

Alt-country indie darlings Wednesday are taking the Green Stage on Saturday afternoon, and it’ll be my third time seeing them in the span of just over a year. Their third album, Rat Saw God, was both Paste’s top album of last year as well as my personal favorite of 2023. Guitarist MJ Lenderman will be playing his second consecutive Pitchfork Festival, after his solo set last year (which featured two drummers playing at the same time and a legendary aftershow). I’m especially anticipating how the eight-and-a-half minute behemoth “Bull Believer” (and, in tandem, Karly Hartzman’s guttural screaming) will sound on those giant festival speakers, but I’ll certainly be getting my fix of Xandy Chelmis’s pedal steel either way. —Leah Weinstein

Read our Digital Cover Story on Wednesday here.