Iggy Pop and Bikini Kill headlined the 17th Mosswood Meltdown festival

The 17th Mosswood Meltdown took over Mosswood Park in Oakland for three days in July 2026, running 20 bands across tree-lined stages with the film director John Waters hosting the entire weekend and introducing nearly every set.

Pavement opened proceedings on the Friday pre-party alongside Wednesday and Vivian Girls. The main bill was topped by Iggy Pop and Bikini Kill, and the weekend leaned hard on unity across punk generations rather than on nostalgia.

Iggy Pop headlined the Saturday at 79, shirtless, opening an 18-song set with T.V. Eye and moving straight into Raw Power and I Got a Right. The Los Tropicanos backed him with tight precision and the right amount of sleaze, and he finished inside a cage, from Wild One through to Mass Production.

Saturday's earlier sets did most of the work. The Japanese revival rockers the Fadeaways, who had played a guerrilla set by the festival entrance a year earlier, got a main stage introduction from Waters and ran ten songs including a screeching cover of Louie Louie. Nashville's Snooper brought papier-mache puppets and a set that pushed the afternoon into the red. The Spits played 26 songs at breakneck speed against an all-pink game show backdrop. Otoboke Beaver, from Kyoto, put the Field Stage in a stranglehold with an inflatable beaver bouncing through the pit.

Sunday belonged to women and to drag. Peaches Christ opened with a cover of God Save the Queen, leading a run of punk standards with Kochina Rude dressed as Pee-wee Herman for the Germs' Lexicon Devil and Trixxie Carr taking Suicidal Tendencies' Institutionalized. Frankie and the Witch Fingers followed with synth-heavy dance punk, and Fred Armisen joined Carrie Brownstein, Corin Tucker and Toko Yasuda in the Return of Jackie and Judy, a Ramones tribute band that dedicated Rock-n-Roll Radio to the L7 bassist Jennifer Finch, who had died the day before.

Bikini Kill closed it. Young girls in day-glo punk gear pressed against the barricade for Carnival, Alien She and Rebel Girl, and Kathleen Hanna spent as much time looking at them as playing to them, telling the crowd she could not wait to open for them in ten years and shouting out young female-fronted bands including Bitchfit.

Jennifer Finch's diagnosis was reported in our earlier story on her brain cancer, and Otoboke Beaver later apologised for injuring a fan with a thrown guitar. More bills sit in the festival tracker and on our rock hub.