Returning to the Avenue of the Saints Amphitheater in St. Charles, Iowa, Hinterland Music Festival entered a new chapter in 2026 by (as it turns out temporarily) expanding to four full days. Rather than treating Thursday as an early arrival day, the festival immediately embraced its evolving identity with a lineup spanning indie rock, hyperpop, electronic music, hip-hop, and alternative pop.
One of Hinterland’s defining strengths remains its single-stage format. Instead of a series of conflicting sets, every artist receives the audience’s full attention. This setup creates a shared experience where strong artist fanbases meet thousands who are discovering new artists. All without worrying about where you need to be next.
Outside of Ashnikko and beabadoobee, much of Thursday’s lineup was made of names we knew but hadn’t had the opportunity to explore in-depth. That single-stage setup offered us a chance to get better acquainted with several rising acts, as well as a band making its headlining debut!
Porch Light
Minneapolis five-piece Porch Light opened Hinterland with the kind of indie alternative rock that immediately felt bigger than an early afternoon festival slot. Led by Jackie Uhas’ powerful vocals, Porch Light paired melodic indie alternative rock with heavier guitar work that became increasingly prominent as the set progressed.
That range became increasingly apparent as the set moved from songs like “Fall Back” and the recently released “Arctic” through “Recognize You,” “Upside,” and “Oxygen.” The latter has become the band’s breakout track, but the set also showed a band increasingly willing to push into heavier territory.
By the time they reached the recently released “Under,” the heavier side of the band had fully emerged. Written specifically with the idea of creating something that could inspire a mosh pit, the song gave Uhas an opportunity to push her vocals while the rest of the band leaned into some of the set’s biggest riffs. It was a fitting endpoint for a performance that felt like it was deliberately building in intensity.
Frost Children
Frost Children wasted little time changing the atmosphere. Siblings Angel and Lulu Prost blur the lines between electronic music, emo, and pop, with a live show that pushed those sounds together at a near-constant pace. Arriving so early in the afternoon, the sudden burst of electronic music, pop and heavier edges gave Thursday its first dramatic change of pace.
What we weren’t prepared for was the intensity of the crowd. Frost Children brought one of those intensely devoted fan bases where every word and beat triggered a strong reaction. From “Satellites” and “WHAT IS FOREVER FOR” through “Blue Eyes,” “Creep,” and “Afterlife,” that energy never waned. It may have been the middle of the afternoon, but it felt like the craziness of a late-night crowd.
Jane Remover
Jane Remover proved considerably more intense live than their recordings initially suggested. Often associated with digicore and hyperpop, the set pushed well beyond those boundaries, layering electronic production with distortion, noise and a physical intensity that often felt closer to a rock show.
That collision was also noticeable in the crowd. Fans who seemed to come from the electronic side of the festival found plenty to grab onto when the set turned heavier, while those drawn to rock responded just as enthusiastically when Jane Remover pulled everything back toward electronic music. Tracks including “Professional Vengeance,” “Music Baby,” “Dreamflasher,” and “Flash in the Pan” moved between those worlds without much concern for where one genre ended and another began.
Jane Remover had found common ground among audiences that don’t always occupy the same festival space, with a set that was heavier, louder and considerably more intense than we expected going in.
Oklou
After Jane Remover’s intensity, Oklou provided one of Thursday’s sharpest contrasts. Backed by guitar and keys, her songs took on a softer, more organic quality live, pairing understated vocals with atmospheric electronic elements.
Much of the set pulled from choke enough, Oklou’s acclaimed 2025 album, including “take me by the hand,” “obvious,” “blade bird,” “harvest sky,” and, of course, the title track. The appeal was in the details. Sounds appearing, disappearing, and leaving room for contemplation.
Coming after Frost Children and Jane Remover made the contrast particularly effective. Oklou’s softer, art-focused approach gave Thursday room to breathe before the lineup changed direction yet again.
AUDREY NUNA
Going into the festival, we admittedly still associated AUDREY NUNA most closely with KPop Demon Hunters. What followed couldn’t have been much further from those expectations.
From the opening moments of “Saddle,” AUDREY NUNA’s set hit with an explosive intensity. Heavy bass provided the foundation for a performance rooted in hip-hop. “Comic Sans,” “Mine” and “Locket” quickly established the range of an artist who moves between rap, R&B, pop, and alternative sounds.
The opening notes of “How It’s Done” midway through the set brought an immediate explosion of cheers from the crowd. The KPop Demon Hunters track was the most familiar point of reference for us going in, but surrounded by songs like “IdgaF,” “Baby OG,” and “damn Right,” it became just one piece of a much larger picture.
Ashnikko
With Ashnikko, it was difficult to separate the music from the overall performance. Set design, costumes, choreography, and the songs themselves all belonged to the same wonderfully strange world. A world that frequently felt like Ashnikko’s own twisted trip through Alice in Wonderland.
The dancers were just as much a part of that visual language as the scenery, with choreography that regularly turned the performers themselves into pieces of the artwork. Combined with exaggerated costumes, ribbons, bows, and makeup, individual moments often looked like carefully constructed tableaus before breaking apart and moving into something entirely different.
The 14-song set moved through newer tracks including “Microplastics,” “Lip Smacker,” “Trinkets,” and “Smoochie Girl,” alongside established favorites like “STUPID,” “Slumber Party,” and eventual closer “Daisy.” For all the visual excess surrounding them, the songs still carried weight. The humor, confrontation, and absurdity already present in Ashnikko’s music simply blended with the production surrounding it.
Surprisingly, this was also a somewhat restrained version of Ashnikko. At least by Ashnikko standards. But restrained certainly didn’t mean lacking. If anything, the performance demonstrated how completely developed her visual language has become, creating something provocative, funny, bizarre, and unmistakably her own.
beabadoobee
By the time beabadoobee took the stage, one of Thursday’s largest and most devoted crowds had gathered. After an afternoon driven by the intensity of Frost Children, Jane Remover, AUDREY NUNA, and Ashnikko, the shift in mood felt almost welcome. Beabadoobee’s more relaxed indie rock offered a chance to settle in and savor the evening after several hours of chasing one rush of adrenaline after another.
The production, however, was anything but simple. A sculpted terrain covered much of the stage, rising toward the back and effectively placing beabadoobee and her band within a hillside. Holographic visuals behind them added another layer of depth, creating one of Thursday’s most distinctive settings without overwhelming the performance happening within it.
The set also offered a glimpse of what comes next for beabadoobee. “Sun Has Set” opened the performance with its live debut, while “All I Did Was Dream of You” and “Switchblade” were also performed live for the first time. Those new songs were mixed among familiar favorites including “10:36,” “The Perfect Pair,” “Talk,” and “Cologne,” before “Beaches” brought the set to a close.
More than anything, the performance made the size of beabadoobee’s following impossible to miss. Fans sang along throughout the evening, and the connection between the stage and the crowd remained strong even during the unfamiliar new material. In a day filled with performances that demanded attention through intensity, beabadoobee found another way to hold it.
KATSEYE
With Sophia absent due to illness, KATSEYE took on the job of closing Hinterland’s newly added Thursday with four members onstage. Despite the reduced lineup, very little felt scaled back about the performance. From “PINKY UP” into “Debut,” the group launched into a tightly choreographed production that immediately felt large enough to justify their first festival headlining set.
That choreography remained at the center of the performance. Extended dance breaks were built into songs like “Debut” and “Gabriela,” while longer intros and transitions helped turn the 14-song set into a continuous production rather than a series of individual performances. “Animal” received its live debut, and an acoustic version of “My Way” briefly pulled things back before the show began building again toward its finale.
“Touch” brought an enormous reaction early in the set, while “Gabriela” and eventual closer “Gnarly” were met by the kind of screams that made it clear just how dedicated KATSEYE’s fanbase has already become.
As “Gnarly” brought the main stage to a close with one final extended dance break, KATSEYE had delivered something Thursday hadn’t really offered until that point: a fully synchronized pop spectacle built around precision, movement, and scale. It was a fittingly different ending to a day that had rarely stayed in the same musical world for very long.
Campfire Stage
Nourished By Time, the project of Baltimore artist Marcus Brown, opened the late-night portion of Thursday with a sound that felt particularly at home on the Campfire Stage. Pulling from R&B, New Wave, post-punk, electro-funk, and experimental indie pop, Brown’s music was soulful without fitting neatly into any of those individual lanes.
That mix also made for a fitting transition away from the scale of KATSEYE’s main-stage finale. The Campfire Stage may sit in a large open field, but its smaller footprint creates a surprisingly intimate setting. Nourished By Time leaned into that atmosphere, with Brown’s genre-blurring sound well suited to the smaller stage and late-night setting.
If Nourished By Time fit naturally into the intimacy of the Campfire Stage, Pixel Grip found a completely different way to use the space. The Chicago trio closed Thursday with a dark, club-driven mix of synth-pop, house, industrial, and electronic body music that transformed the open field into a late-night dance floor.
Fronted by Rita Lukea, Pixel Grip paired that electronic pulse with lyrics that could be biting, provocative, and clearly personal. Much of the band’s music explores desire, power, liberation, and the darker corners of human relationships. The set was equal parts dance music and confrontation.
The smaller stage, dramatic performance, and darker electronic sound became the atmosphere themselves.
It was an appropriately unexpected way to end a day that had repeatedly challenged our expectations. From Porch Light opening the main stage hours earlier to Pixel Grip carrying Hinterland deep into the night, Thursday had moved through indie rock, hyperpop, experimental electronic music, hip-hop, pop spectacle, R&B, industrial, and plenty of unknown territory in between. For a festival increasingly interested in where music is going next, its first day made that point loudly.
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All photos unless otherwise captioned were shot by East of 8th
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