This week, III Points, the adventurous and trendsetting music festival in Wynwood, announced its Phase II lineup, completing the roster for its annual event Oct. 17-18. Dozens of artists will fill Mana Wynwood from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. both days, and they span from electronic and house music to rap, hip-hop, R&B, indie rock and more. We combed through the lineup to pinpoint five acts—and one iconic DJ dance party—not to miss should you choose to enjoy the weekend of festivities, which also includes immersive art installations and live art making.
Turnstile: This hardcore quintet from Baltimore is one of rock’s most stratospheric success stories of the past decade, hitting No. 22 on the U.S. Heat charts with its 2015 debut Nonstop Feeling—a mere prelude to 2021’s Glow On, which hit No. 1 on the country’s Hard Rock charts and earned three Grammy Awards. In June, the band will release its much-anticipated fourth LP Never Enough, which is expected to follow Glow On’s lead in weaving melodic elements of shoegaze and soul music into their hard-and-fast bailiwick.
Thundercat: An undisputed giant of the bass guitar, Stephen Lee Bruner, aka Thundercat, has had an outsized influence on myriad styles, performing with artists as varied as Suicidal Tendencies, Erykah Badu, saxophone colossus Kamasi Washington, Gorillaz and especially Kendrick Lamar. Comfortable laying down the bottom for music as eclectic as funk, thrash and astral jazz, Thundercat’s own four albums channel his musical virtuosity and genre-weary restlessness, winning Best Progressive R&B Album at the 2021 Grammys for It Is What It Is.
Darkside: This New York City electronic act first caught my attention with its second album, Spiral, released on the seminal indie label Matador and whose cuts such as “Lawmaker” and “Liberty Bell” shook both the mind and the body with their groove-laden structures and psychedelic flourishes. The trio, which combines the best of live and programmed music, supports its latest album, the slippery and funky Nothing, whose title belies the complexity therein.
Amyl and the Sniffers: Named after the Australian slang term for the drug known as poppers—which vocalist Amy Taylor likened to the band’s immediate, aggressive high—this head-banging pub rock act is one of the most exciting and in-your-face rock bands of the past five years. Profane, loud and confrontational, Amyl and Sniffers harken gloriously and snottily to punk’s golden age of the Sex Pistols, Stooges and Fear.
Magdalena Bay: III Points marks a homecoming gig for this duo of Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin, who formed Magdalena Bay in Miami in 2016. They’ve since relocated to the west coast, where they’ve formulated a sound that feels utterly now in the nostalgia-rich 2020s: a synth-heavy mix of electronic, rock and alternative pop music enlivened by richly conceptual writing and a stage presence rooted in early aughts culture.
Despacio: There’s no DJ set quite like this one, which runs all weekend long at III Points. The high-end rig of eight McIntosh stacks ensures a surround-sound experience like no other, and the music selections are impeccable for dancing one minute and chilling the next, with LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy and Soulwax’s David Dewaele and Stephen Dewaele spinning the vinyl, in which acid house, spiritual jazz, soul, new wave and classic rock commingle. Our former web editor James Biagiotti calls Despacio “genuinely life-changing.”
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