The NZ art-pop auteur — brooding, minimal, and generation-defining, back on a headline stage where the whispered verses hit hardest.
Kilby Block Party 2026 Lineup
Three May days at the Utah State Fairpark: Lorde, The xx and Turnstile over one of the most tightly curated indie bills in the country.
Kilby Block Party 2026 has already wrapped, but you can still dig through the lineup and find the acts you would have loved.
Find the acts you'll love at Kilby Block Party
Name a few bands you love and we'll scout all 70 acts on the Kilby Block Party bill for the ones you shouldn't miss.
About Kilby Block Party 2026
Kilby Block Party grew out of Kilby Court, a 100-capacity garage venue in Salt Lake City, and has become one of the most tightly curated indie bills in the country. The 2026 edition ran three days at the Utah State Fairpark with 70 acts, headlined by Lorde, The xx and Turnstile.
The programming is the reason to pay attention. Rather than buying a broad festival bill, Kilby books like a record shop staff-picks shelf: reunion sets from American Football and Grandaddy sitting next to Feeble Little Horse, YHWH Nailgun and Hotline TNT, with Father John Misty, Japanese Breakfast, Modest Mouse, Lucy Dacus and Blood Orange filling the middle. Very little of it overlaps with the amphitheatre circuit.
It also books its own scene properly. Utah acts including The Moss, Ritt Momney, The Kilans and Pixie & the Partygrass Boys played alongside the touring names, which is not something most festivals of this size still bother to do.
Expect indie rock, alternative, indie pop and post-punk across 70 acts.
Kilby Block Party 2026 lineup: all 70 acts
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Whispered minimalism that somehow fills a festival field — intimacy at headline scale, 'Intro' still raising arm hair.
Hardcore's joyful crossover kings — dreamy interludes, stage dives, total communion, and a crowd that moves as one.
Bedroom-recorded songs that curdle in beautiful ways — pitch-shifted vocals, folk melodies, and lyrics that never explain themselves, from indie rock's most quietly influential songwriter of the past decade.
One album in 1999 that quietly became the emo-revival blueprint, and a reunion that turned out to have real songs in it.
Minimalist LA synth-punk trio — icy grooves and motorik precision, like a security-camera feed of a party you're not cool enough to attend.
Bad Luck Brigade
Lili Trifilio's bright, fast guitar-pop about being twenty and miserable — the songs are far sharper than that sounds, with 'Prom Queen' still a viral touchstone.
A 2000s indie-pop lifer whose songs about very ordinary things have quietly outlasted most of the scene — power-pop craft worn as casually as a thrift-store tee.
Sibling duo making fuzzy, playful alt-pop with internet-era intimacy — lo-fi textures and hooks that sound DM'd directly to you.
Dev Hynes's velvety art-R&B — '80s soul textures, jazz chords, and quiet heartbreak from one of pop's most sought-after collaborators.
Nashville guitar-pop with a rasp and a big chorus — festival-ready without being calculated about it, 'Freakin' Out on the Interstate' still the calling card.
Cork's melodica-toting indie romantics — Fontaines-adjacent and rising fast, with a windswept, literary streak all their own.
Eight-piece London chamber-rock swells — patient, communal, and overwhelming, songs that gather like weather until the whole room is inside them.
Belfast noise-dance — industrial techno pulse under post-punk vocals, engineered to blur the line between gig and rave.
Shane Lavers's project — smeared, sample-strewn pop that keeps resisting a clean shape, beloved by the corner of indie that prizes texture over tidiness.
The blog-era success story, now essentially Alec Ounsworth solo, and that distinctive warble is undimmed — self-released indie history still touring on its own terms.
Dad Bod
Chicago trio playing wide-open, echoing guitar songs with two voices trading off and a genuine sense of space — heartbreak surf-rock with room to breathe.
Austin's instrument-swapping all-women punk-metal wrecking crew — everyone plays everything, and it all lands at full force.
Michael Collins' revolving Los Angeles project, rebuilding sun-bleached 1970s AM pop with a rotating cast of guest vocalists out front.
Deadpan spoken-word over wiry post-punk — Florence Shaw's found-text poetry delivered motionless while the band churns behind her.
Ethan Regan
Josh Tillman's lounge-lizard prophet act — gorgeous orchestration, acid wit, and a crooner's delivery that sells every barbed line.
Pittsburgh noise-pop that keeps interrupting itself — sweet melodies shoved through a broken amp, engineered to fall apart beautifully.
Fightmaster
Florida indie rock built for festival fields — 'August' euphoria, surging choruses, and a live energy that outruns the recordings.
Melbourne's deadpan folk harmonists — three voices, one wicked sense of humor, close-harmony singing with a stand-up's timing.
Xenya Genovese's woozy, guitar-led bedroom pop, sung like she's half-asleep and completely certain — Manchester cool at a whisper.
Absurdist synth-pop performance art — bubbly, deranged, delightful, a show engineered to make a crowd grin and go 'what?' simultaneously.
Gonk
Jason Lytle's fuzzy synth-and-guitar melancholy about obsolete machines and the people who loved them — 'The Sophtware Slump' still quietly prophetic.
Sixties-pop scaffolding with the reverb of a much later record — a clear, unhurried voice that makes a small room feel enormous.
Away from Paramore, looser and stranger — the voice is the same, the arrangements considerably weirder, solo records made for headphones over barricades.
Will Anderson's blown-out shoegaze with actual pop songs underneath all the fuzz — proof the revival has songwriting legs.
Digicore prodigy turned noise-pop auteur — abrasive and gorgeous at once, walls of distortion hiding devastating melody.
Michelle Zauner writes about joy and grief with the same precision, over arrangements that keep getting more ambitious — gong hits and all.
Jill Whit
Post-punk-inflected alt-rock with a genuine 2005 dance-punk streak, and much heavier live than on record — new-core energy with real nostalgic craft.
Loose-limbed, Dylan-shaped American songwriting, delivered like he has all the time in the world — road-dog albums that keep quietly stacking up.
A novelist's eye for the specific detail, delivered in the warmest voice in the boygenius orbit — 'Night Shift' still the slow-burn masterclass.
Maryland songwriter with a light touch and unusually sharp lyrics about being observed online — bedroom pop with a producer's ear.
Maximalist internet-native synth-pop, with a live show built to match the density of the records — lore, visuals, and hooks in equal supply.
Melody Prochet's French psych-pop, layered and slightly disorienting in the best way — kaleidoscope production around featherweight melodies.
Isaac Brock's jittery, seasick guitar songs about the highway and the void — three decades of them, still unmistakable from the first yelp.
Miami group trading in loose, sun-warmed bedroom guitar pop — jangle and bilingual charm played at a permanent afternoon tempo.
Nadezhda
Galway four-piece dealing in gauzy, low-slung shoegaze with a persistent undertow of dread — Irish gloom in slow motion.
Perth duo — punchy, sunburnt indie rock in the great Australian garage tradition, mates-first energy and hooks to match.
A drag queen and environmental organizer whose sets are equal parts performance, choir, and outdoor-access advocacy — camp with a cause.
Pixie & the Partygrass Boys
Bay Area darkwave with a slick, sinister R&B undertow — goth music you can actually move to, horror-movie romance included.
Left a YouTube career behind to make genuinely ambitious, orchestral experimental rap about death and dissolution — one of the internet's great reinventions.
Rachael Jenkins
Jack Rutter's Salt Lake bedroom project, which went unexpectedly viral and then made the interesting record anyway — the cover paid for the experiments.
New York hardcore built around a banjo run through a wall of distortion — genuinely unlike anything else, and heavier than it has any right to be.
Norwegian duo's icy avant-pop — classical strings meet club unease, beauty kept deliberately off-balance, fashion-week cool with conservatory bones.
Lindsey Jordan's guitar playing is the real draw — clean, unhurried lines under lyrics about wanting more than you got.
Oklahoma synth-funk duo — velvet grooves, zero pretension, chillwave warmth with actual pocket, made for golden-hour sway.
Starr 67
The Kilans
Theatrical London five-piece who arrived fully formed — corsetry, harpsichord flourishes, and songs big enough to justify both, 'Nothing Matters' the proof.
Provo-formed indie rock with a tropical lilt, and one of the Utah scene's genuine breakout stories — breezy hooks with island warmth.
Nate Amos writing straightforwardly beautiful songs after years of deliberately difficult ones — Water From Your Eyes' other half, unmasked.
Montreal soft-pop with a late-'70s AM-radio warmth and Jane Penny's unhurried delivery on top — soft-focus songs with sneaky staying power.
Wilbere
Jack Tatum's reverb-soaked '80s indie-pop, which has aged much better than the chillwave label it arrived with — 'Shadow' still shimmering.
Louisville trio pairing deadpan vocals with wiry, off-kilter guitar figures — dream-logic songwriting kept taut rather than hazy.
NYC's most confrontational new band — spasmodic percussion-punk that levels rooms in twenty-minute bursts, and nothing else sounds like it.
The headliners
Lorde — The NZ art-pop auteur — brooding, minimal, and generation-defining, back on a headline stage where the whispered verses hit hardest. Three albums in three distinct modes, all built on carrying enormous weight with very few notes.
Turnstile — Hardcore's joyful crossover kings — dreamy interludes, stage dives, total communion, and a crowd that moves as one. Baltimore hardcore that stopped being only hardcore; one of the most physical live sets going.
The xx — Whispered minimalism that somehow fills a festival field — intimacy at headline scale, 'Intro' still raising arm hair. Whispered duets over almost nothing at all, a band defined by what they leave out.
Up-and-comers to catch early
Feeble Little Horse — Pittsburgh noise-pop that keeps interrupting itself: sweet melodies shoved through a broken amp.
YHWH Nailgun — New York experimental noise built on percussion that never settles, abrasive and genuinely thrilling.
Hotline TNT — Blown-out shoegaze with actual pop songs underneath all the fuzz.This is Lorelei — Nate Amos writing straightforwardly beautiful songs after years of deliberately difficult ones.
Die Spitz — Austin four-piece who swap instruments mid-set and play garage-punk like it might fall apart.
Freak Slug — Woozy Manchester bedroom pop, sung like she's half-asleep and completely certain.
The Moss — Provo-formed indie rock with a tropical lilt, one of the Utah scene's genuine breakout stories.
Other acts worth planning around
American Football — The 1999 album became the emo-revival blueprint, and the reunion turned out to have real songs in it.
Grandaddy — Jason Lytle's fuzzy melancholy about obsolete machines and the people who loved them.
Father John Misty — The lounge-lizard persona hasn't slipped in a decade, and the arrangements keep improving.
Show Me the Body — New York hardcore built around a banjo run through a wall of distortion.
Magdalena Bay — Maximalist internet-native synth-pop with a live show as dense as the records.
Kilby Block Party 2026 lineup FAQ
Who headlined Kilby Block Party 2026?
Lorde, The xx and Turnstile, across a 70-act bill.
When and where was Kilby Block Party 2026?
May 15–17, 2026, at the Utah State Fairpark in Salt Lake City.
What kind of festival is Kilby Block Party?
An indie festival that grew out of Kilby Court, a 100-capacity all-ages garage venue in Salt Lake City. The booking leans indie rock, shoegaze, emo and experimental pop, and it consistently books more adventurously than its size would suggest.
How many acts played Kilby Block Party 2026?
70, including reunion sets from American Football and Grandaddy and a substantial contingent of Utah artists.
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