Lost Lake Music Festival, Phoenix’s largest music festival to date, is this month, Oct. 20-22. Headliners include Chance the Rapper, The Killers and Odesza. KAMP Student Radio spoke with Kongos, Broods and Odesza before the big event.

Kongos, comprised of four brothers originally from South Africa, went to high school in the Valley. Danny Kongos said he was excited to play in their hometown.

“It’s pretty exciting and satisfying. We’ve been wanting to come back and do a show like this for a long time,” Kongos said. “Last year we got to do that show at Crescent [Ballroom] and that was a lot of fun, but we haven’t gotten to do a big outdoor stage in downtown Phoenix. It should be great.” 

Kongos said he thought a festival of this size is overdue.

“Phoenix has a blossoming music scene… and it deserves something like this,” Kongos said.

He said their festival set will be more concise than usual because they’re playing to an audience which is not as familiar with their music. Kongos said that they’ll be playing the hits, which might include their 2014 smash hit “Come with Me Now.” That song peaked at number one on the Billboard Alternative Music Charts. 

Kongos also teased that they might play something new at the festival, saying “we’ll see.”

The alt-pop band Broods, who has played at sister festival Outside Lands, said at that festival they didn’t expect much of a crowd at their opening time slot, but were blown away by the energy that showed up. 

They said they hoped the same for their Lost Lake performance, which will be Friday at 6 p.m., as they’re trying to make a name for themselves here in the U.S. 

“In America we are an alternative band, but in New Zealand and Australia we are a mainstream pop act,” the siblings of Broods said.

The band gained some notoriety when they opened for HAIM in 2014, who is also playing Lost Lake. As they come off the stage, the members plan to say hi to the HAIM sisters, as they said Alana would definitely remember them. 

“When people remember us, we’re like ‘Wow!’ It’s always nice to see people that have been a part of certain moments in our career,”  Georgia Nott, lead vocalist for Broods, said.

Nott also said she’s very excited to see Chance the Rapper, who is playing on Friday after Broods, but would love to also stay for The Killers, who are headlining Saturday night.

Odesza, who is finishing out the festival with the final slot on Sunday night, just released their new album A Moment Apart. 

Harrison Mills, part of Odesza, said his favorite song is “Thin Floors and Tall Ceilings” and Clayton Knight’s is the Leon Bridges feature “Across the Room.” When asked about rounding out the show, Mills said there are certain expectations.

“You want to put on a great show,” Mills said. “We treat every show, especially on this next tour, like we’re closing out the big main stage. We have a bunch of new surprises lined up. I don’t want to give too much away, but we’ve spent a lot of time working on it and we’re really excited for it. It’s got a lot of moving pieces, it should be quite the show.” 

Mills and Knight said their visuals play a huge part in their live shows. 

“Since we wrapped up the album, we’ve been working on the new show which will be premiering in San Diego and then performing at Lost Lake as well,” The pair said. “It’s a whole bunch of new production, we’ll have a whole bunch of new set pieces with us, whole bunch of new music off the album and stuff we haven’t released, built for the live show. It’s a little revamp, and we’re really excited to show you guys what we’ve been working on for so long.” 

Odesza said they created most of the album art with photographer Tim Saccenti, who they had never worked with before.

“He was really fun to work with. We basically did all of our different single covers and a lot of our stuff for our album all in one shoot, this kind of 12 hour long, power-through-a-million-different-settings-and-styles and that was really fun for us and really interesting,” the Odesza duo said. “As far as music video goes, we just released the Leon Bridges music video, and we worked with Ian Schwartz, who is a fantastic director. And we shot everything on film, so that was also something new for us.”

Giving advice to festival goers, Mills said to “go in with an open mind and try and see people you don’t know, because I’ve discovered some of my favorite bands through happenstance.”

Stay tuned for more of KAMP’s coverage of the festival, and get tickets here: www.lostlakefestival.com