FREAKOUT! 2025 Lineup Includes Melt Banana, Wine Lips & Oruã

There’s a phenomenon where, so often, people complain about nothing happening in their home cities, claiming that nothing of value is being produced locally, yet the same people don’t provide enough support to the things that are being created in their own backyards. There are multiple excuses to justify this, but I need to admit that it’s something that we’ve been guilty of ourselves. Perhaps, these complaints aren’t entirely unwarranted. Perhaps, the best stuff often gets buried by less impressive but better-promoted acts. Maybe we’re all just getting old and are out of the loop/ I don’t know. What I do know is that the argument that fresh, new, exciting music doesn’t exist loses its credibility if you don’t make an effort to go out and discover what’s out there. A lot of artists are working hard for visibility and simply don’t get the support. For 13 years, the folks behind Seattle‘s Freakout! has taken it upon themselves to create their own path, highlighting both local and international talent, and giving the city a reason to get out of the house and have something to be excited about. At the forefront of their work is the annual Freakout! Festival.

Freakout! describes itself as “a community-oriented music collective and a producer of concerts & music festivals in Seattle” that “provide[s] music discovery opportunities for all while supporting artists locally and internationally by focusing on artist needs over profit.” The website offers a breakdown of their evolution, which began in 2013 as “an epic music-fueled party” called the Psychedelic Holiday Freakout. In 2016, the label Freakout! Records was formed. The following year, the winter event transitioned into Freakout! Fest, permanently settling in the Ballard district of Seattle, where it remains a multi-night, multi-venue event now held in the fall. In 2022, the collective began hosting a smaller spring festival called Freakout! Weekender, while promoting shows here and there. Then, in 2023, Freakout! acquired their 501 (c) (3) status as a non-profit organization, complete with a board of directors.

Ahead of their 10th anniversary in 2022, Festival co-director, Guy Keltner, spoke on their history. 

“Freakout started as a big-ass party for all of our friends masked as an amateur festival. We were morons and held the first few fests in December. The point was to do something unique. After 10 years of touring, finding new music and making new friends, we’ve grown Freakout into something truly special.”

2022 was the only year I’ve attended, but I was impressed with what they have going on. It feels lively, yet small and intimate. There’s an excitement to that, almost as if you’re attending various house shows within a few block radius. That year, they caught my attention with acts like Tropicália legends, Os Mutantes, and Los Angeles electro-post-punk trio, Automatic, but it was becoming familiar with locals like Monsterwatch and bands like El Shirota from Mexico that made the experience what it is. I remember looking at the lineup and noticing how many acts I didn’t recognize. It clicked with me that this should be viewed as a positive and an opportunity to discover both international bands that have been curated, along with some of the talent I’ve been overlooking all around me.

Today, Freakout! releases the first wave of artists for this year’s festival. Among the standouts are experimental Japanese noise titans. Melt-Banana; Canadian garage-psych outfit, Wine Lips; jazzy, lo-fi Brazilian indie-krautrock hybrid, ORUÃ; jammy California psych-folk rockers, Color Green; and Seattle‘s own doomy Latina sludge trio, Muñeca. One new addition this year is that the festival will extend out of Ballard into a pair of clubs in Fremont. It decentralizes things a bit, but I’m sure that we’ll learn more as the event approaches.

Details about all the scheduled acts and more can be found on Freakoutrec.com. Tickets are available for purchase now.