Governors Ball has always worn its youthful spirit on its sleeve. With the lineup heavily catering to New York’s youngest concertgoing public, every new iteration of the festival inevitably ends up shaped in the image of the internet’s latest obsessions. 2026’s lineup, for instance, turned out to be a real treat for the K-pop faithful — so much so that pit viewing tickets sold out on the very first day of presale. But for those indifferent to Stray Kids, is there fun to be had?
Fortunately, smaller acts are coming in swinging this year, offering not just vibes, but real variety. Here are five picks for anyone looking for a midday alternative to sweating in front of the main stage.
1. Turnover
Turnover appears elusive enough to refuse categorization, yet too clearly tethered to their influences to feel opaque. Peripheral Vision’s instrumentation rings of early Slowdive, while Good Nature confidently borrows from Blink-182’s melodic repertoire, all the while retaining a signature Midwest-emo cadence in the vocals.
What makes them especially compelling in a festival setting is their laid-back, hometown-stage aura. One could reasonably expect to catch these guys at a bar show in Philly, buy them a few Coronas and exchange a respectful nod. But don’t let the Patagonia shirts fool you — Turnover delivers more than cozy comfort. Their set is built on emotional subtlety and quietly clever lyric-writing, reminding the crowd that restraint still has a place on massive stages.
2. Geese
Geese have been called just about everything under the sun, from “that one indie band I don’t get” to the saviors redefining rock music here and now. Whether you, reader at home, personally subscribe to their prodigy status or not, it’s hard to deny that Geese are the delirious kind of fun.
Vocalist Cameron Winter’s ability to ricochet between five distinct styles within the span of a three-minute track makes it nearly impossible to predict what’s coming next. Paired with their hard-hitting, borderline-blasphemous lyricism (“if you want me to pay my taxes, / you better come over with a crucifix, / you’ll have to nail me down”), Geese are guaranteed to register as more than background noise – but, at the very least, a curious, sweat-soaked jolt of chaos in the smoldering New York City heat.
3. The Beths
With nearly half a million monthly listeners on Spotify — a nontrivial number for any indie band — it’s safe to call The Beths well established. Hailing from New Zealand, the indie-rock outfit has already built familiarity with U.S. audiences through multiple solo tours, even making a recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Their inclusion on the Governors Ball lineup feels less like a gamble and more like an overdue formality, proving that tightly written power-pop, when done this well, still scales beautifully to a festival stage.
4. Hemlocke Springs
Securing the city’s main summer stage without having formally released a full-length LP is no small feat — and yet, Hemlocke Springs has pulled it off. The young singer-songwriter traffics in sugar-rush pop, fusing fairytale imagery of dragons and princesses with a distinctly modern sense of disillusionment, all neatly folded inside a confetti cannon. With a debut album set to arrive before summer rolls around, her Governors Ball set promises a full slate of charming unknowns, as well as the rare thrill of catching a clearly talented pop persona mid-formation.
5. Wisp
A divisive presence among genre purists, Wisp arrives as a herald of shoegaze’s youngest generation — one fully aware of the attention economy of TikTok and Instagram Reels. Her music pulls heavily from the genre’s hazier canon, but packages it with an immediacy that feels, for better or for worse, dependent on the beholder’s ear, engineered for short-form discovery as much as late-night headphone listening.
For skeptics, the production polish may read as artificial. For everyone else, however, Wisp’s set offers a fascinating example of shoegaze in transition, representing less of a subcultural artifact and more of a living genre. Love it or loathe it, her Governors Ball appearance is likely to land as a breath of fresh air in an atypical detour into the smaller niches of grunge, and at minimum, provide a wall of sound worth standing still for.
Taken together, these picks make a case for wandering. Governors Ball, just like any other festival, may be built around spectacle, but its most rewarding hours are oftentimes found elsewhere, be it in the shade or at a smaller stage. These sets won’t demand your phone, your allegiance or your knowledge of choreography. In return, however, they offer something increasingly rare at a major festival: the feeling of discovering something by choice, not by an algorithm.
Arina Zadvornaya is a graduate student in the College of Engineering. She can be reached at az499@cornell.edu.
