Brooklyn's Bazooka! Fest Reveals Stacked 2026 Lineup: Destroyer, Stephin Merritt, Cloud Nothings

Brooklyn’s Bazooka! Fest announced its full 2026 lineup this week, and it’s the kind of bill that rewards actually reading every line of the poster. The festival runs August 22-23 across The Meadows and The Wood Shop, split into two distinctly flavored days.

Saturday leans toward scrappy indie-rock lifers: Cloud Nothings and Times New Viking headline alongside Sadie Dupuis’s Sad13, Colleen Green, and a long tail of local names (Winston Hightower, PARKiNG, TV Buddah, Uniflora, Great Lakes, and more). Sunday flips the mood toward songwriterly eccentricity, with Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields and Destroyer’s Dan Bejar each playing solo sets, backed by Joanna Sternberg, Kiwi Jr., 2nd Grade, and a dozen other openers.

“Bazooka really is my earnest attempt at putting together a festival for New York City that feels special and intimate for both the artists playing and the people attending,” festival organizer Jake Whitener said of the lineup.

Two headliners as different as Merritt and Bejar sharing a single weekend, on a bill this deep with under-the-radar names, is exactly the kind of festival booking that makes late August in New York worth planning around.

Source: Stereogum