As Stone Temple Pilots once said, so much depends on the weather.
On Friday in the Mojave Desert, roughly 30 miles southwest of Las Vegas, Rise festival learned this the hard way, which is to say the weather did not cooperate. High winds and attendant dust forced Rise organizers to open the gates almost three hours late, with the night’s set times subsequently shuffled and the evening’s centerpiece event — the release of thousands of paper lanterns into the sky — canceled entirely.
Meanwhile, reports of hourslong wait times for attendees arriving from the Vegas Strip by shuttle, plus sparse food options, were posted on social media by many incensed pass holders in the time during and after night 1.
The internet pile-on was swift and harsh, and the vibe on the grounds Friday night was, in many moments, challenging. The wind and dust got in eyes and nostrils, for many necessitating face masks, with chilly winds adding a bite to the air. Some waited in long lines for drinks and food while others (like us) sailed right up with no problem. As many in the crowd stood protecting their eyes while standing amid hundreds of unlit torches, reminding us that the night’s core activity wasn’t happening, in moments the experience felt more like one to endure rather than enjoy.
Still, the show went on, with the thousands of attendees on site doing their best to make the best of it. A member of the crowd handed ski goggles to singer Emitt Fenn during his evening performance so he could continue playing without hazard. (“Getting sick, having all my gear broken, and destroying my voice was definitely not in my bingo card but I still had the time of my life,” the artist later wrote in a post about his set. “Thank you everyone who still came out to Rise festival and howled at the moon with me through a sandstorm.”)
Fenn was followed by LP Giobbi, who heroically just danced in the wind during her characteristically spirited set on the Compass Stage, with Ben Böhmer and Rüfüs du Sol both putting on memorable (for them probably as well, given the conditions) performances Friday night on the Horizon Stage. Though the night ultimately wrapped with the most-anticipated acts successfully performing their sets in full, online chatter was ablaze with refund requests, complaints on the festival’s social media pages, and even nicknaming Rise as “Dustpocalypse 2025.”
Taking place on the Jean Roach Dry Lake Beds, an expanse of flat desert tucked between the I-15 and rolling hills of the Mojave, Rise bills itself as the world’s largest paper lantern festival. It was heavily advertised on social media, with ads also flashing on digital billboards along the Strip, with the vibey time on offer being a stark contrast to the mega-clubs and magic shows. This year, the selling point was also an eye-popping lineup featuring big-font names Ben Bohmer, Rüfüs Du Sol, Disclosure, Calvin Harris, Goose and John Mayer.
Given its desert location, Rise altogether gave a feeling of a smaller and more metropolitan-adjacent Burning Man, complete with various art installations, desert fashion and an intentionality-focused mindset, albeit one that divided attendees into silver, gold, platinum and diamond tier hangout areas depending on the investment they made in tickets.
All of the aforementioned elements worked significantly better on Saturday, when the winds died down to a pleasant flutter and the night sky was clear of dust. These improvements by Mother Nature were accompanied by much smoother ingress and egress experiences, thanks to the work that staff put in between days one and two. (And a big shout-out to the entire festival staff at large, who were perpetually friendly and helpful, even when the winds were rough.)
By the time thousands of lanterns were glittering in the sky on Saturday, it was easy to forget about how tough Friday was, or, better yet, it was easy to remember that sometimes life isn’t entirely pleasant, but that challenges make the special moments shine brighter. (Although this sentiment is perhaps less easy to accept for attendees who’d only gotten a single-day ticket for Friday.)
Adding to the collective-experience approach, Rise only put on one musical performance at any given time, with shows happening across two stages. The Compass area was located at the center of the site, and the Rise stage, the size of which rivaled that of any major festival and which appeared like a sort of surreal apparition in the distance when arriving to the site, was situated at the fest’s further point.
While there were long lag times between sets, the sound was pristine and the infrastructure at large — safari-style tents, linen couches, art installations, multiple bars, a kitchen slinging sliders, mac and cheese with ribeye and other included snacks for platinum and diamond pass attendees — altogether created a luxe aesthetic that was particularly impressive considering that the festival site is typically just a flat swath of empty land outside of Las Vegas.
Or “Las Vegas-ish” as John Mayer called it on Sunday night, when he greeted the crowd gathered before him. The stage had been warmed up by the always-excellent jam band Goose; their pairing with Mayer creating a Sunday demographic shift that saw the dance fans of Friday and Saturday transition to a generally older crowd. Mayer opened with “Last Train Home,” before acknowledging that the audience had been on the site for awhile, “So I’m going to give you my absolute best.” He then traversed his catalog while playing songs like 2009’s “Who Says” and 2012’s “Queen of California” while delivering guitar solos that reminded us that he’s simply one of the best guitarists of a generation.
The shows on Saturday were more party-focused, with the main stage first welcoming Disclosure, who opened with 2013’s “When a Fire Starts to Burn” (a song included on Billboard‘s recent list of the 50 best house songs of all time), before tearing through an ever-widening arsenal of hits that included “White Noise,” this year’s Anderson .Paak collab “No Cap” and, of course, their all-time banger “Latch.” The show felt like less a warm-up for Harris, but a double billing for the show by the Scottish dance architect, who ripped though his own expansive catalog until a climax moment that saw a genuinely wild amount of fireworks light up the sky.
But by Saturday and Sunday there were light sources vying for top billing. The first was a bright and nearly full super moon, which rose gorgeously over the hills each day of the fest, helping remind one that while the festival site (which was accessible by just one road) wasn’t the easiest to get in and out of, there were rewards for making the effort. The second, of course, was the marquee experience: the lanterns.
On paper, the experience sounds quite straightforward: write some personal sentiments on a paper lantern and release it into the sky alongside thousands of others. In practice, it’s hard to put into words how awe-inspiring it was — and not just the dazzling image of the thousands of twinkling lanterns seeming to move in slow motion as they lifted into the sky and classical music played through the speakers, but glimpsing some of the messages written on them: “Let’s go on more adventures together,” one implored. “Peace on earth,” requested another. “I will see you in heaven Roger,” read one, while another asked for “clean oceans.”
The lantern components each lasted for 90 minutes or so on Saturday and Sunday, creating a real emotional center to each night, particularly as one considered the idea that every single lantern represented not just a person, but their greatest prayers and dreams. Children were seen playing amidst the torches, several engagements happened, people cried, friends embraced, couples kissed, and for at least a few moments in this perpetually distressing world, there was awe and a mood that felt peaceful.
It’s a delicate premise when a festival’s focal point depends on the wind. When it didn’t pan out, the effects were distinctly deflating, but when it worked, it was elevating on every level.
