Preview: Pitchfork Music Festival, 2015

This Friday, July 17th, through Sunday, the 19th, 45+ bands will descend upon Chicago’s Union Park to perform at the 10th annual Pitchfork Music Festival. Tickets are officially sold out and that’s hardly a surprise. The stellar line-up consisting of the most iconic underground acts includes Wilco, Run the Jewels, Sleater-Kinney, Jamie XX, Future Islands, Perfume Genius, The Julie Ruin, Caribou, and Shamir.

To help festival-goers get the most out of this year’s experience, the folks at Pitchfork are offering a free app for Apple and Android devices. Information on all the performing artists, a build-it-yourself schedule, and map of the festival grounds are amongst the features.

What’s more, to help attendees prepare for the this upcoming extravaganza, I created a playlist featuring every artist for each day of the festival. As a seasoned attendee, I understand that many people don’t have the stamina or bandwidth to attend every single day. I also think it takes more than one song to get accustomed to an artist’s style.

Using setlist.fm as a reference point, I chose three songs (in some cases, one or two more) for each artist and added them in according to the day they’re expected to perform. Using Rdio, I manually curated each list and transferred them to Spotify, as well, using a stellar new service, still in beta, called Soundiiz.

Starting with the openers, the line up builds up to the headliners, giving you a feel for what to expect. Chance the Rapper, Sunday evening’s headliner, is not available on either service. While it’s easy to peg him as “pulling a Taylor Swift,” there’s a more compelling reason why these established artists haven’t gone head-to-head with YouTube.

Without further ado, here are the playlists for each day of Pitchfork Music Festival. I’ve listened to them all, discovered some new gems, and genuinely look forward to experiencing this festival for the first time in a few days.