Saturday morning brought something the 2026 Hinterland Music Festival had been waiting for after a wet and windy Friday: a break in the weather.
Storms had rolled through overnight. And, as it appears to be a general music festival trend, some tents and canopies clearly felt the wrath of the storm. However, from our perspective, the Hinterland folks were talking more about the prior day’s sets by Lorde and Ninajirachi than anything weather related. By the time the gates opened, the skies continued to clear, and people were ready for another 13 hours of music.
Saturday felt a little like a return to an earlier version of Hinterland. As the festival has expanded, so has its reach into a wide variety of musical genres. The 2026 version had already seen more hyper-pop than anyone could have imagined just a couple years earlier. But Saturday was a day built heavily around folk, Americana, alt-country, and the rootsier corners of indie rock. There was still plenty of variety to keep things unpredictable, but from the gentle opening notes of Amble through Mumford & Sons closing with fireworks, Saturday felt particularly connected to the festival’s past.
Amble
Amble opened the day with an especially traditional take on folk. The Irish trio leaned into harmonies, acoustic instrumentation, and the distinctive sound of a harmonium as songs including “Schoolyard Days,” “Lonely Island,” “The Swell,” “Of Land and Sea,” and “Tonnta” unfolded at an easy pace.
There was none of the oversized build that has become common in modern festival folk. Instead, Amble stayed firmly within the more traditional side of the genre, providing a gentle start to a day that would gradually become much bigger.
Waylon Wyatt
That shift started quickly with Waylon Wyatt, who has continued to impress us each time we have seen him.
There is “country music,” and then there is country music, and Wyatt continues to fall squarely into the latter. Songs including “Pretty Little Liar,” “Arkansas Diamond,” “O.D.,” and “Box of Bones” draw heavily from traditional country without making the tradition itself feel like part of an act.
There is an authenticity to Wyatt’s music that keeps it from feeling like role-play as a country star. He doesn’t need to push the twang, attitude, or imagery beyond what the songs already provide. The result was a set rooted in the familiar, but feeling remarkably refreshing.
Julia Wolf
Going into Hinterland, we associated Julia Wolf primarily with the darker, harder edge of songs like “Jennifer’s Body.” Instead, much of the early portion of her set leaned toward country rock and alt-country, fitting Saturday’s roots-heavy lineup far more naturally than we ever expected.
Songs like “Burning House” and “Wishbone” helped highlight the genre blend, giving Wolf’s set a place within the theme of the day without eroding the darker edges that made us take notice in the first place.
CMAT
If the early sets eased Saturday into its rootsier identity, CMAT was determined to have more fun with it.
CMAT’s performance was theatrical, fun, and a blur of motion. But none of it came at the expense of sound and messege. Songs including “I Don’t Really Care for You,” “When a Good Man Cries,” “EURO-COUNTRY,” and “I Wanna Be a Cowboy, Baby!” gave her plenty of room to deliver sharp lyrics ensconced in wry humor.
It was one of those sets where the theatrical side added to the show without becoming the show. CMAT had plenty to say, and we were all eager to listen.
Santigold
Santigold was the kind of booking that made Saturday feel even more like our early festival days. Lineups would often have a clear focus on folk, jam, or indie rock. However, they also left room for artists who could expand your musical tastes.
With choreography, coordinated costuming, and a stage show that remained dramatic without becoming overwhelming, she created one of Saturday’s most visually distinctive performances. Songs like “L.E.S. Artistes,” “GO!,” and “Unstoppable” brought sharp rhythms, electronic textures, and a kinetic pulse to the Hinterland afternoon.
The Format
THE FORMAT brought another layer of indie rock to Saturday. Formed by Nate Ruess and Sam Means in the early 2000s, the band returned in 2026 with Boycott Heaven, their first new album in two decades.
At Hinterland, the songs came across with an easy confidence. Ruess spent the set working the front of the stage to connect with the growing festival crowd. Older favorites like “Dog Problems” fit naturally alongside the newer material. More than anything, The Format were one of those sets that just worked from beginning to end.
Jessie Murph
JESSIE MURPH opened with “House of the Rising Sun,” immediately putting both her voice and a bluesier twist on her sound at the center of the performance. Her gritty delivery fit the song naturally, setting a tone that carried through much of the set.
That blues influence remained present even as Murph moved into her own material, making the songs feel far more substantial than their country pop roots. Other classic covers scattered throughout the performance only reinforced the connection.
The set also gave us one of the more talked-about moments of the entire Hinterland weekend involving her painting skills…which we will let you watch and decide how you feel about it.
Mumford & Sons
Then came MUMFORD & SONS.
We’ve seen the band several times before, but, like a lot of people, it’s been a while. That time gap instantly vanished once “The Wolf” gave way to “Little Lion Man” and “White Blank Page.”
From there, the set moved easily between longtime favorites like “Awake My Soul” and “The Cave” and newer material such as “Rushmere,” while thousands of people kept clapping, dancing, singing, and, inevitably, stomping along.
Just as the band covered a lot of musical ground, Marcus Mumford also covered a surprising amount of the Hinterland field himself. During “Ditmas,” he jumped the outer barricade and took off through the crowd, absolutely flying up the hill while security attempted to follow. The gap opened almost immediately, and watching the pursuit unfold from our spot on the hill became one of the night’s more unintentionally entertaining moments. (The dude can absolutely fly!)
Elsewhere, Mumford & Sons occasionally pushed considerably harder than the folk-rock label might suggest. At one point, roaring guitars and an almost ridiculous amount of fire transformed portions of the stage into something far heavier than the Mumford & Sons many people first encountered more than a decade ago.
But the band’s classics remained their anchor. Those songs still create the kind of enormous communal moments that festivals are built for, and Saturday’s roots-heavy lineup could hardly have found a more fitting headliner.
By the time “I Will Wait” brought the main stage to a close with fireworks overhead, Hinterland had thousands of people singing and dancing together one last time.
Back To The Campfire
Of course, Hinterland was not technically finished yet.
The Brook & The Bluff kept the night going on the Campfire Stage, offering one more smaller-scale set after the enormous Mumford & Sons finish.
It was a considerably more intimate reunion than the last time we caught them at Bonnaroo in 2022, but the smaller setting only made the band’s harmonies and easy chemistry feel more immediate. After the scale of Mumford & Sons and the main-stage fireworks, The Brook & The Bluff kept the night feeling alive rather than simply winding it down.
Buffalo Traffic Jam were still to come, and there had been plenty of hype around their Campfire Stage set throughout the weekend. After closing down the stage on each of the previous two nights, we fully intended to make it three in a row.
We did not.
Three full festival days had finally caught up with us, and there was simply not enough caffeine left to push through another late-night finish. So Buffalo Traffic Jam became one of the rare Hinterland sets we had to leave for everyone else to tell us about.
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