Ten years after a one-off festival became legend in the San Francisco underground, FREAK NEST will make its long-awaited return to Public Works on August 22nd and 23rd. Billed as “A Ten Year Resurgence,” the second-ever installment of the independently funded music and arts festival will host more than 40 performers across three stages including newly added artists Mr. Carmack and a Dirtybird Records takeover featuring Moody Jones and other DJs [get tickets].
The new additions join a genre-defying lineup with sounds spanning psych rock, hip-hop, deep house, jamtronic, bluegrass, Balkan brass, New Orleans second line, and beyond. The bill includes SunSquabi, Dead Meadow, Sugar Candy Mountain, Shaheri, Falcons, The Helltones, Samson, Baghead, and more, along with special reunion sets from Coo Coo Birds, Down Dirty Shake, and The Orange Peels, plus a Good Duck Records stage takeover.
Beyond the music, FREAK NEST will feature live painting, projections, and gallery installations by visual artists from the Bay Area and beyond, as well as aerial performances, food vendors, and a Burning Man-inspired saloon project outside the venue. The team also plans to activate the street leading into Public Works with a village of vendors, food, and large-scale visuals projected onto surrounding walls.
Created by longtime friends Taylor Lissandrello and Matthias Wesner, FREAK NEST began a decade ago as a chaotic passion project built from whatever resources they had at the time. Taylor had built deep roots in San Francisco’s live music scene, while Matthias had spent years touring with a production company rooted largely in the dance world. After a late-night conversation in Taylor’s father’s art studio, the two decided to take Matthias’ production gear, set it up in Taylor’s warehouse (aka The Cave), and build the kind of show they wanted to experience themselves.
The first FREAK NEST was part festival, part art experiment, and part community gathering. Taylor described it as “beautiful and complete chaos,” recalling moments like percussion collective Gamelan X rolling a cart of gongs into the middle of the crowd to perform traditional Balinese procession music between sets by a punk band and a psychedelic pop band. In hindsight, that strange, funny, and unexpected mix captured the heart of what FREAK NEST set out to be.
Related: The Big List Of 2026 Summer Music Festivals
Now, ten years later, the idea has returned with more intention, more resources, and a deeper creative network behind it. Matthias’ experience in production, dance, theatrical performance, and aerial arts now meets Taylor’s continued roots in the live music world, allowing them to build out a fuller version of FREAK NEST: a place where music, movement, and visual art can exist together without being forced into a single genre.
That refusal to fit a mold is central to the festival’s identity. FREAK NEST is designed for artists and audiences who want room to get weird, move freely between genres, and feel part of something bigger than any one scene. Rather than separating the hip-hop, house, rock, or dance communities, the festival aims to recognize them all as part of a unified artistic ecosystem.
For Taylor and Matthias, the festival is a response to the growing corporatization of venues, tickets, festivals, and live music as a whole. It is artist-run, independently funded, and rooted in the musicians, painters, and dancers who make the festival possible. As Matthias put it, the hope is to build something “of the artists, by the artists, and for the artists and the people supporting them.”
FREAK NEST’s return also arrives at a time when both founders feel community spaces are more necessary than ever. The two had considered reviving the event around its five-year anniversary, but the pandemic disrupted those plans. A few years later, Matthias bought Taylor’s childhood home and, as the festival’s ten-year anniversary approached, they found themselves back in the same room where they had dreamed up the first FREAK NEST. They saw it as fate and got to work.
While this year’s event marks the first FREAK NEST in a decade, the founders do not intend to wait another ten years for the next one. The hope is to continue growing the concept, potentially with future events on both the East and West Coasts. For now, the focus is on the San Francisco resurgence and creating a weekend that feels alive, communal, and impossible to neatly categorize.
At its core, FREAK NEST is a celebration of art on its own terms—a space for independent artists, weirdos, dancers, painters, musicians, builders, wanderers, and anyone looking for a place where individuality becomes commonality.
Tickets for FREAK NEST: A Ten Year Resurgence are now on sale here. Watch a recap of the inaugural 2016 festival below.
FREAK NEST | San Francisco, CA | 3/26/16 | Recap Video
Video: POW MAGAZINE
This article contains partner content.