Desert Hearts Festival 2023

United States

Lake Perris

May house, techno, and love set you free.

WHY DESERT HEARTS?

Desert Hearts Festival, one of North America’s most celebrated boutique electronic music events, has announced its return to Lake Perris, California  May 5-8, 2023.

Made with an abundance of love and attention to detail, Desert Hearts offers an elaborate yet intimate take on live music that can only be found in the idyllic mountain-rimmed valley of California, a paradisal escapade like no other festival in the world.

With an ever-growing community keen to get a taste of the idiocentric festival, 2023 is set to be its best year yet, with a host of improvements in place, rooted in the feedback of their devout family of followers.

CODE OF COMMUNITY

A fundamental factor of the DH experience is its collective nature and code of community, which has been built into the festival since its inception in 2012. 

Cherishing the importance of unity, its four founders (Lee Reynolds, Marbs, Porky, and label head Mikey Lion) go by some core values that quite frankly, should be at the heart of every festival.

Inclusivity, creative freedom, and acceptance remain front and center for 2023. It is this exact spirit that makes Desert Hearts one of the wildest and most authentic community-driven festival experiences out there.

Foster free creative self-expression and self-discovery.

Encourage free thinking and individuality.

Look out for one another and lift each other up in a positive way.

Strive to give back to our local communities.

Encourage participation and self-reliance.

Believe in the balance of both the sacred and the temporal.

Inspire one another to proliferate these values in the world.

Whether you’ve got some cool deco for your camp, tripped-out clothes or costumes, paintings or art instalations, or like to dance like nobody is watching, this is the place to do it. 

With a very much ‘you bring the vibes’ tenor, Desert Hearts sets an example of what can happen when we lead with love.

VENUE

This year, the forward-thinking founders behind the escapist, cult-classic SoCal music festival have returned to its ‘one stage, one vibe’ policy as a way of encouraging participation, self-expression, and community, all under one single dancefloor and the realm of dance music.

Of course, the dancefloor is at the forefront of the weekend, however, there is more than meets the eye at Desert Hearts. 

With so much on offer, the 2023 edition will feature a tighter and more cohesive layout (with the beach remaining a focal point), additions of interactive activities and water sports, as well as an abundance of workshops and a state-of-the-art healing sanctuary for those that need a well-deserved recharge.

Committed to creating a space for community healers to gather and share their knowledge, the revolutionary Healing Sanctuary will host various forms of health-givings, including Sound Healing, Crystal Healing, Reiki, Energy Work, Spoken Word, and Relax/Recharge Zones - and it doesn’t stop there.

Workshops this year will also be hosted around the site, with everything from flow classes to yoga and movement arts, to key speakers and presentations, offering spaces for you to open your heart and learn something new.

Okay, we’ll give you one more thing to get excited about. With the famed edition of Tonight’s Tavern a massive hit for the festival's Lake Perris debut last year, the interactive lakeside saloon will see additional programming elements for this year’s event, complete with comedy, musical performances, and other unexpected oddities for your enjoyment.

It sounds too good to be true!

CAMPING

Where do we stay, you ask? Well, for those looking for an elevated camping experience like no other, you can reserve a spot at the Lakeside Ready-Set Camping site - the newly imagined camping experience with a beachfront location is just steps away from the main festival amenities. 

The Ready-Set Camping area features two options of Ready-Set tents to choose for your convenience:

A standard pre-set camping tent.

A more premium Canvas Bell Tent with both options designed for two people.

Catering to all, whether it's packing light, not owning camping gear, or flying in from the other side of the world, everyone is able to experience the magic of Desert Hearts with these all-encompassing packages.

There will also be camps right off the dance floor and stage-side car camping on grass for attendees who want to sleep as close to the "House, Techno, Love" action as possible.

LINE-UP

Beyond the new and improved venue, it remains the musical offering that makes Desert Hearts one of the best-curated parties on the planet.

With a line-up intrinsically created by the Desert Hearts crew, it is the nomadic journeys of Mikey Lion, Lee Reynolds, Marbs, and Porky that inspire the festival's unique roster every year. 

Between each edition of the internationally acclaimed festival, the Desert Hearts crew hit the road to grace the booths of some of the world's most celebrated parties, where they become further entrenched in the sounds of tomorrow, whilst brushing shoulders with the scene’s foremost flag bearers.

It is essentially the group's collective networking that helps them find new artists and talents from around the world, which has aided the curation of the festival's biggest and most wide-reaching lineup to date.

Pulling out all of the stops, an array of big names have been reeled for the occasion, as well as artists from further afield, who are on the brink of their DJ career take-offs.

Highlights of the explosive docket include an epic B2B performance from Chicago house music legends Derrick Carter and Mark Farina, as well as Gene Farris. 

Detroit underground genesis’ and two of the city’s house music champions will also take center stage, DJ Minx and DJ Holographic each commanding the decks over the course of the weekend.

The opulent billing continues with multi-genre pioneer Skream, UK dynamo Dusky, Turbo label-head TIGA, Dirtybird boss Claude VonStroke, a debut from lo-fi originator DJ Seinfeld, alongside dancefloor favorite Justin Martin, progressive house sensation Miss Monique, Hot creations founder Lee Foss, elrow resident Tini Gessler, 90’s rave revival production duo Prospa, and Club Bad’s percussive house frontrunner Melé. 

Additional highlights include Polish house duo Catz ’n Dogz, emerging tech house producer Eddy M, and next-generation house risers VNSSA and Mary Droppinz.

Dipping further into more esoteric and left-of-center stylings, CINTHIE, Soul Clap, Lubelski, Partiboi69, and newer names such as Atish, Eskuche, Rybo, as well as cinematic techno producer Rinzen, a B2B set from Cascandy and Beth Lydi, and Wyatt Marshall, Evan Casey, Morpéi B2B Ofier live and Tara Brooks, among others.

Of course, no Desert Hearts celebration would be complete without an appearance from the curators themselves. All four members of the DH crew will also command the crowd over the weekend.

A "very special guest" is still to be revealed. Keep your eyes peeled.

For the perfectly intimate lake-side vibes and the positive Desert Hearts energy for which the festival is so famous, this is the perfect way to kickstart your summer here at Lake Perris, California.

Tickets are OUT NOW.






























On a hot summer day this past Labor Day Weekend in New York, DJ Holographic sets Electric Zoo’s “The Landing” stage ablaze with hard-hitting house and techno tracks straight out of Detroit. The DJ-producer—née Ariel Corley— is no stranger to major festival lineups. Just this year, she’s brought the heat to Coachella, ARC Music Festival, and her hometown festival Movement, plus she’s made stops at Berghain and Amnesia, Ibiza along the way.




Known as a mentee of pioneer Carl Craig, DJ Holographic has undoubtedly become one of the leading names in this generation of Detroit techno, bringing her sultry sound from the Motor City to techno fans worldwide.



At the close of her Electric Zoo set on Sunday, she took Gray Area from the stage to her trailer to talk hip-hop, generational musicality, and what it’s like to do music full-time after the pandemic.







Your Electric Zoo set was amazing. I see you on every festival lineup - even Portola, which I’ll also be at later this month. Is music your full-time job?




Yeah, I’ve been doing music full-time. It’s been one of my favorite things to do. But because of COVID, it was definitely a little hard for most of us. But I was able to hit the ground running and really blast with that. I think also with the government helping entrepreneurs a little bit, that helped. I was definitely on the low-income stream of survival of artists. Don’t get me wrong, the money wasn’t a lot, but it was enough for me to survive because I lowered my expenses. It is hard to make music or any kind of art full-time to an adult wage.




That makes sense. I’d imagine it’s hard to make a living wage off music sometimes.




There’s living, but there’s actually lifting yourself up and actually being able to go to festivals, take care of your house, school debt, and anything extra. I’m getting to that point of taking care of those adult things like getting my teeth fixed and making sure to have good health and go to a doctor regularly. The important stuff that you don’t do when you’re an artist, and you’re broke.




Like therapy.




Yup, I make sure I do that once a week!




So expensive.




Exactly, but it’s worth it when you’re able to have that blessing.




Definitely. I interview a lot of artists, and they always say their earliest childhood memory is listening to music with their parents in the car. I know you and your parents have a long history of sharing music and generally being very musical. Do you have a specific moment where you knew that this was wanted to do for the rest of your life?




It was definitely more after high school during college. I love music. Music was always my life - between sharing music with my parents in the car to listening to it with my cousins in our living room. But actually wanting to do it for a living, I want to say I was 22. I decided to like really go full-time, mainly because my mom passed away, and I didn’t know really what to do. I was pretty depressed. I ended up playing a record every day just to kind of get myself up. It helped me build my confidence and my morale back up.




When you lose somebody that close to you, you don’t know what to do. Mentally, when she passed away, I was like, “Okay, God. Universe. You fucking owe me for making me lose my best friend.” And then after that, I just kind of trickled down to playing records at my job at Necto to having more friends [in music]. It was a different kind of route than I think most people do, but it helped my mental state. And that’s why I decided I’m gonna do it full-time.







During that time, were there any records you would play on repeat that helped you get through tough times or that reminded you of your mom?




I was playing a lot of J Dilla and D’Angelo. Because I was going from Detroit and living in Ann Arbor at the time, there was actually one song that helped me through. Shigeto’s “Huron River Drive.” I was practically living on Huron River Drive, so I thought it was a golden sign. And it’s a good song.







That’s beautiful. You mentioned [Detroit night club] Necto earlier. I know you worked coat check for two years before spinning there, and your parents used to party there as well.




Yeah, my dad used to go there. My mom might have snuck some moments in, but my dad definitely and my stepmom as well, before they met each other. At the time, it was called Nectarine Ballroom, and Jeff Mills— or “The Wizard,” technically—was playing, so he used to go there all the time. My first week or two, my dad was like, “Is The Wizard still there?” and I was like, “No, we have other people now. He’s moved on.”




That’s so funny. I feel like either you connect with your parents and follow in their footsteps, or you want to stay as far as possible away from what they’ve done. I read that your dad was a DJ in the collective Direct Drive, so did you ever feel like because he DJed, you didn’t want to do it?




I gotta be honest. He said he was a DJ—and he did DJ—but I think he moreso helped move records at the time. The funny thing is my dad knew I was DJing, and he was totally down for that, but it took two years for my aunt to tell me that he used to DJ, and I got mad at him.




I was like, “Why didn’t you tell me you used to do this?” And he said, “If I told you, would you do it?” and I was like, “I don’t know.” So I get it. My dad used to say the same thing. I think… I don’t know. Maybe not. I don’t know about “what ifs” sometimes.




You’ve said music runs through your veins, so maybe it all happened serendipitously.




Mhm. And it made perfect sense. I love it. It’s my favorite thing in the world.




It shows. And when you’re not spinning, I heard you listen to Kendrick.




Yeah, I love Kendrick.




What did you think of his last album?




I was listening to it today. I can tell you all I want. It’s one of my favorite albums. It’s really up there. It’s very healing. It’s very spiritual. It definitely made me cry because there are a lot of experiences [that you can relate to] if you’ve ever been in an inner-city. A lot of the things he was saying related a lot to Detroit. He’s also, in his songs, having you go through a healing process, so you know you’re not alone, and this is how you heal.








DJ Holographic

Lissy Lübeck

Arielle LeJarde