This is The Pitchfork Review.

I'm Pooja Patel, the editor-in-chief, and today we're talking about one of our favorite events of the year, the Pitchfork Music Festival.

Here with me are Reviews Director Jeremy Larson and managing editor Amy Phillips.

Welcome.

Hello, Pugia.

Hello.

So every July, we pull off this amazing feat.

We gather a group of our favorite artists and some up-and-coming bands to play at Union Park in the middle of Chicago.

It's a three-day festival, and every year, it truly feels like we pulled off a miracle like it will this weekend.

But before we get to this year's festival and some of the things that we're looking forward to, let's start at the beginning.

Amy, you have been to every single one of the Pitchfork music festivals in Chicago.

Is that right?

I missed one, 2017, because I had a three-week-old baby.

But other than that, yes, I have been to every single one. No excuse. And you were at Pitchfork then.

Yes, it was 2005. It was the Intonation Festival curated by Pitchfork. Anyway, it became the

Pitchfork Music Festival the following year. But that first one was truly one of the most, there's really no better word than just magical experiences of my life because we were this very small staff that didn't know anything about running a music festival. The idea was just to have a kind of

IRL real world version of the website in a way. Like here are all these bands that we've been

championing. And they were all very tiny. I mean, the headliners were Tortus and the

Decemberists. It was the biggest crowds that most of these bands had ever played to.

And it just felt like this real moment indie rock was just coming into the peak of its cultural relevance.

It was also the same summer that Lollapalooza debuted in Chicago as a single city festival.

It had, of course, been touring, you know, this juggernaut throughout the 90s and then kind of petered out.

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