Sound Script

May 15th – 17th 2026

Photos by Jaye Short and Sam Howard

Review by Sam Howard

Utah is home to a lot of things; from beautiful mountains to dirty sodas. One thing that most people don’t realize is just how good the music scene is here, and how big it’s becoming. Starting off as an actual block party taking place at Kilby Court, Kilby Block Party quickly grew to become one of the biggest indie music festivals in the world. This year being the 7th installment of KBP, the festival has expanded exponentially from playing the block of Kilby Court, to the Utah State Fairgrounds. With bands and artists like Turnstile, Lorde, Hayley Williams, and many more on the bill for KBP 7, this year was set to be one for the books. 

Day 1 –

Friday, May 15th marked the start of the festival with Turnstile headlining the day. Not only would this be the hottest day of the Block Party, but it also came with the heaviest bands of the entire weekend. With bands such as Die Spitz, Show Me The Body, and Provoker leading up to Turnstile, day 1 of the festival would produce the most aggressive mosh pits that the Kilby Block Party has ever seen. Throwing in some shoegaze bands like Hotline TNT, mixed with some indie classics like Japanese Breakfast, Beach Bunny, and Snail Mail, this year’s lineup had something for everyone to enjoy. Let’s not forget legends of the local music scene here in Utah as well, with bands like Dad Bod and Ritt Momney. 

Overall, Friday was the most intense day of the block party. The blazing sun was not enough to keep fans from turning up the heat in the pits for Turnstile at the end of the night. From the opening song, “Never Enough” to the closing song “Birds” the crowd had a constant mosh pit open with never ending waves of crowd surfers, making the festival security work hard for their money. Each song being played just kept the crowd going hard. It was exciting to see how receptive the Kilby Block Party crowd was to a more hardcore scene, and I hope that we welcome heavier sounding bands in the future. 

Day 2 –

Saturday marked day 2 of the festival, and it was a lot more tame of a vibe. Though the shell shock of Turnstile still lingered from the night before, the weather was merciful with constant clouds and cooler temperatures. Starting off, the opening sets were some local bands such as Wilbere, Jill Whit and The Kilans. During this lineup, there were three earlier sets that really set the tone for how the rest of my festival went– Feeble Little Horses, Automatic, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. If you didn’t get a chance to catch these bands at the festival, I strongly urge you to check them out. The first difficult choice I had to make of the weekend was deciding between Jane Remover and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and having seen Jane Remover put on a phenomenal performance before, I had to go with the other set, and I had an absolute blast doing it. Making choices between bands really came down to one thing for me this year, and that was whether or not I had seen them live before. So when it came time for the second hard choice of the weekend, seeing The Moss or Lucy Dacus perform, I had to go with the latter. 

Day 2 of the festival was filled with so many tough decisions like this leading up to our headliner, The XX, which was an absolute killer performance. It was a highly anticipated performance as well, since this would be the first time The XX would perform as a trio in eight years. The music they played was a complete 180 from the music being played the night before, and mixed with the visuals and the cool summer night breeze, The XX put on such a breathtaking performance. 

Day 3 –

We had finally reached the last day of the festival with some quite heartbreaking time slots of bands and artists playing at the same time. Bad Luck Brigade playing the same slot as Rachael Jenkins, Melody’s Echo Chamber at the same time as Tops, Flipturn playing the same slot as American Football, and Magdalena Bay playing at the same time as Kenny Hoopla. With so much going on during the final day, there was almost constant bouncing between stages leading up to the two most anticipated sets of the weekend: Hayley Williams and our headliner Lorde. The last day of the Block Party always seems to bring some sort of rainfall like clockwork. Though it didn’t start raining fully until the American Football set, the weather was kind enough to make it more of a lighter, though consistent, rainfall.

Day 3 of the festival also brought on a lot of firsts for some of the artists. During American Football’s set, they brought out Hayley Williams on stage to perform, for the first time together, their song “Uncomfortably Numb” for the first time together. It was an amazing little treat for those that caught American Football’s set. Following that was Magdalena Bay, which is always such an amazing performance, but with the added rainfall, it felt so magical to be dancing to their discography. Next up was Hayley Williams, who would be making her first ever festival appearance as a solo artist right on the Kilby Stage. With her, she brought the political messaging that she is known for with her performances, advocating against the building of the data center here in Utah and taking a stand against ICE. Though the rain was not letting up, it did not stop the next artist, Blood Orange, from putting on one of my favorite sets of the entire weekend. Getting to see Blood Orange on the same day as all these amazing other artists was absolutely amazing.I hope to be able to catch a full headline set from Blood Orange soon. 

Ending the entire weekend of the Kilby Block Party was Lorde. Being a newly independent artist, as well as this being her first performance ever in Utah, Lorde’s performance was what most people at the festival were waiting for. Not only was the performance absolutely breathtaking, the rain made her set so ethereal. Picture this: you are with your friends in the pouring rain listening to Lorde perform her song “Ribs” which not only ended her set, but the entire Kilby Block Party Festival. That is how I ended my Kilby Block Party this year, and it will be hard to top that experience, but I am sure Kilby Block Party 8 will have something very exciting in store for us next year and will not disappoint at all.