Almost all of the major music festival lineups have been announced now, and with every festival providing a slightly different lineup, it can be hard to choose which sweaty dance party you want to drop $500 dollars on for a ticket. So this week, our music-obsessed writers will let you know the bests of each lineup, and you can decide where to spend four stoned days this summer.

Sasquatch!

Sasquatch! Music Festival is the obvious choice to scratch that summer festival itch. Located for the 14th year in a row at The Gorge Amphitheatre in scenic Washington State, Sasquatch! is the perfect combination of everything that makes a good festival.

Sasquatch is far enough away from Edmonton that you can have a fun road trip getting there, but not so far that you’ll start to hate all your friends before you arrive. Such is the issue with more distant festivals like Bonnaroo, where the 32-hour drive will make you want to chuck your friends out of the moving vehicle and into a ditch before you’re halfway there.

The lineup is spectacular this year, featuring heavy-hitters like Kendrick Lamar, Modest Mouse, Tame Impala and tons of others. Hearing these amazing acts in the gigantic Gorge Amphitheatre is an opportunity not to be squandered.

One might argue that most of these festivals have similar headliners, and therefore they’re all the same. But where Sasquatch shines is in the lesser-known bands that grace the stage. Seattle rockers Thunderpussy will rock your face off, while Natalie Prass promises to quietly serenade your sensitive side. And when you’re in need of a laugh, you can hit up comedians like Nick Thune and Cameron Esposito.
Ignore all these other sugges-tions for summer festivals. There can only be one winner, and that winner is Sasquatch. – Jason Timmons

The Governors’ Ball

It’s the age of the music fes-tival, let’s face it. Coachella and Sasquatch both boast huge amou-nts of star power, and recently, newer festivals like Pemberton and Squamish have been coming to the forefront. If you’re a festivalgoer, you’re definitely spoiled for choice. However, there seems to be one name that people usually seem to overlook: The Govenor’s ball.

Taking place June 5 to 7 on Randall’s Island, New York City, Govenor’s ball boasts a particularly stellar lineup this year. Coachella has the traditional stars, but their lineup is lacking a bit. Pus, the decision to have AC/DC headlining a weekend seems more than a little strange to me. Sasquatch has many big names headlining, but if you’re not in the indie music crowd, you might have trouble warming up to it.

The Govenor’s Ball is the best of all worlds. You have the headliners with suitable star power: Drake, Lana Del Rey, Florence and the Machine. But underneath, there are some excellent secondary acts that will fill any musical niche you can think of. Artists like Bjork, Death From Above 1979, Flying Lotus, Weird Al, are all pretty much exclusive to Govenor’s Ball. I mean Coachella is bound to have a couple of them, but who has time to actually read the entire lineup? Govenor’s Ball my friends, overlook it no longer. – Zach Borutski

Coachella

White girls rejoice.

No other festival in North America draws as much hype as Coachella, and for good reason. General admission tickets sold out in less than 20 minutes thanks to the consistently impeccable lineup.

The trio of headliners: AC/DC, Jack White and Drake merit enough star power for their own standalone festival. Other artists include: Florence and the Machine, David Guetta, Hozier, Tame Impala, alt-J, The Weekend and DJ Snake, to name a few. There is no better festival for fans of indie rock, EDM, and hip-hop, but the draw of Coachella doesn’t just end there. Artists typically bring out tons of surprise guests with past surprises including Beyonce, Justin Bieber, Jay Z, Gwen Stefani, and a hologram of Tupac Shakur. At typical festivals, performances don’t go past the festival poster. But in Coachella’s case, you never know who’s going to show up.

And the best part? You get the opportunity to see the exact same thing the very next weekend. So if you totally have finals during the first weekend, there’s still a chance to rock that super-cute flower headband with your favourite maxi skirt. – Jon Zilinski

SXSW

Music festivals can be an unsettling place for people who don’t like being around thousands of people in one small fenced-in space, and you can only see so many bands in a single weekend. Coachella tried to remedy that by having two weekends of ridiculously trendy crowds. But AC/DC is headlining this year, so is it really the hipster mecca it used to be?

Luckily, none of those shitty characteristics of music festivals exist in the week-long, spaced-out streets of Austin during South by Southwest (SXSW). During the festival, every bar and music venue in the city is used to host the hundreds of bands that come from all over the world. It’s like bar-hopping, but every bar has a wicked band playing.

Unlike the big festivals with impressive line-ups where you know all of the words to every song from every band, SXSW features up-and-coming acts that you probably haven’t heard of yet. That means you get a chance to see new and exciting bands in between the acts that you already know and love. Some of the bigger names at this year’s SXSW include Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and Of Montreal. Even Edmonton is sending some musicians, including the ridiculously cool Wet Secrets.

Although passes are ridiculously expensive, you can try your luck at finding your favourite shows and paying a cover fee at the door to get in, which makes SXSW the most thrifty option for attending a music festival. – Maggie Schmidt