Playa Ponderosa, AZ | July 3–7, 2025
The four horsemen of the anti-apocalypse – Mikey Lion, Marbs, Lee Reynolds, and Porky – joined forces with Walter Productions once again to summon Desert Hearts to Playa Ponderosa over Independence Day weekend. No holiday could be more apt for this communion of musicians, artists, free-thinkers, and love-lifters – an exuberant exhale of freedom of expression and unapologetic joy. This crew of whimsy-weaving harlequins has perfected the art of capturing a perfect moment in time – and stretching it across 72 nonstop hours, and then rolling it into the real world.
Somewhere beyond the blur of convention and the hush of the humdrum, a candy-coated portal opens
welcoming us wide-eyed into a world where basslines bounce like Dr. Seuss rhymes and glitter is a basic need, not a luxury. Who else has a fashion runway erupt from the dancefloor mid-festival and fold it directly into the event’s ethos? I watched the spectacle perfectly positioned atop the Byte monster art installation – feeling like a psychonautical fly on the furry wall of Desert Hearts’ wildest hallucinations. Mikey Lion’s partner, Cookie, has clearly left a colorful fingerprint on the festival’s aesthetic. Let your freak flag fly!
This place is more than a psychedelic playground for the soul – it’s an intangible home for the children of chaos.
A roving revival for the reincarnated torchbearers of the ’60s Love Generation. Anyone can throw a party, but this crew channels the sacred silliness of the Merry Pranksters and the beat-soaked wanderlust of Kerouac, steering a cultural caravan whose lineage runs through Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests, echoes in the dirt-under-the-fingernails spirit passed down from pioneers like DJ Garth, who once hauled his Wicked Soundsystem cross-country on a Greyhound bus, and onward into the dust of Burning Man and beyond. You can hear it in the music, feel it in the art, see it in the dilated eyes of elders and newbies alike. The mission continues.
These mythic tales and legendary festival stories were once only whispered through our curious, rebellious minds, but now they’ve been made manifest again. We’ve been gifted the chance to step into the myth, to carry the baton, and to raise it high with pride and purpose.
Even those lost still reside. They live on in the Dreamscape Art Gallery’s memorial to our sister Amy Kells, and on the roaming train mutant vehicle originally conducted by Josh Levine – now carried forward by artist & photographer Jesse Hudson. Josh and Amy may have been taken from us far too soon, but
no one ever really dies if we continue to tell their stories.
Even if you don’t know their names, you feel their fingerprints in the nooks and rabbit holes decorating the festival’s enchanted terrain.
This tribe knows that sorrow isn’t forever and that joy isn’t frivolous – it’s fuel. That wellness isn’t just spa treatments, organic juices, and sweaty yoga mats – it’s surreal celebration, mutual respect, uninhibited expression, and radical rediscovery in a sea of smiles and booty drops.
If hedonism was once a dirty word, Desert Hearts has lovingly washed it, painted it neon, and draped it in sequins and blinky lights.
Here, pleasure is protest. Wellness is a wobble. And the medicine is in the music.
But even paradise has its perils.
This year, for the first time, the dust whispered warnings. Trash littered the ground where once it was pristine. Newcomers arrived without water, assuming the land’s generosity was infinite. It’s not. Word spread that the spring only has two decades of drink left in her – but that truth needs to be stated from the get-go.
And so, to the founders, the promoters, the caretakers of this Seussian sanctuary – we must coach the next wave not just in dance and dress, but in duty. Radical Self-Reliance. Communal Effort. Civic Responsibility. Leave No Trace. These aren’t just principles – they’re spells that keep the portal open.
Because if we forget to care for this wonderland, the lollipop trees will wilt, the speakers will fall silent, and the dream will dissolve into dust.
Let us continue to spread the magic but also lean into our higher purpose.
Desert Hearts has built the playground.
Now it’s up to us to show up to the plate.
Top 5 Sets (Actually 7):
1. Marbs
The Desert Hearts Black founder and techno troubadour entered flow state like a desert DJ hacker armed with a Game Genie, unlocking infinite lives and celestial power-ups with every blend and drop. From mystical techno tunnels to sonic seances, Marbs guided the dancefloor into his underworld temple of shadow and soul. The Papa Bear of Desert Hearts showed his prowess but held space with humility, lighting the path with pulse and reminding us that dark doesn’t mean distant – it means sacred. This was probably the best Marbs set I’ve seen in all my years of attendance. No cap.
While they didn’t play together, it only felt fitting to review them together – in a cosmic coincidence of phonetics and frequencies. Omri. and Omnom collided like mirror-dimension brothers – two sides of a deliciously weird coin flipped by the gods of groove.
Omri., Tel Aviv’s psychedelic son, served up bouncy, brain-tickling basslines like soufflés – delicate, decadent, and laced with soul. With the precision of a classically trained provocateur, he stirred trance roots into a new-school funk potion, leaving us cooked to perfection and ready to be devoured.
And Omnom – Los Angeles’ misfit maestro – stitched together colliding genres fluidly like a lucid dream whispering out of Freud’s mouth and echoing off Jung’s tomb. His set was a whirlpool of weird and wonder, beats and vocals drifting through the dancefloor like cryptic love notes from the absurd.
Each of them bent time, melted faces, and turned the mainstage into a neon-lit fever dream we never wanted to wake from.
3. Andreas Henneberg & Beth Lydi
Two halves of a frequency ritual transmitted from Berlin, Andreas and Beth stitched the night to the morning with surgical precision and serpentine soul. He descended first – late-night frequencies slithering through our subconscious like a techno snake charmer coaxing serpents from the spine. With decades behind the boards, Andreas manipulated sound like brainwaves, keeping our psyches tethered to his pulse.
Then came Beth – a soft sunrise sorceress with the same sharp skillset – gliding in after dawn cracked the trees, taking the crowd from primal to playful without ever dropping the thread. Their sets were mirrors: one closing the portal with bass-heavy hypnosis, the other reopening it with buoyant command. Together, they danced along the fractures of existence, showing us how to shake hands with chaos and waltz with divinity.
4. Mark Farina
Some names aren’t just on the lineup – they anchor it. Mark Farina’s addition was more than a stamp of approval – it felt like a recalibration of the collective consciousness. A godfather of groove stepping into the circle with no need to flex, but rather to elevate.
From Chicago basements to San Francisco’s soul, Farina has been a modern minstrel of the Mushroom Jazz gospel. And at Desert Hearts, he brought the full sermon – deep, funky, and unfiltered. Each track felt hand-picked from a secret vault of wax wisdom, sewn together with turntablist finesse and a wink from the old school. No gimmicks. No fluff. Just a master moving molecules with a smile and a groove.
When Mark Farina steps behind the decks, time slows. Booties shake. History breathes. And the whole dancefloor remembers why we fell in love with house in the first place.
5. Tara Brooks
If Desert Hearts has four horsemen, Tara Brooks is the silent fifth – a sonic priestess cloaked in sunrise and sub-bass. She’s not just a resident – she’s a gravitational force, an initiator of altered states, a conduit between bedlam and communion.
Her set was a spell – hypnotic, sultry, stitched in spirals of acid haze and melodic shimmer. With the grace of a seasoned oracle, she guided us through a waking dream where the only language was rhythm and the only law was surrender. And like clockwork, there they were – her Desert Hearts brothers swaying beside her, hearts on their sleeves, instinctively drawn to the hearth she holds. Now, that’s family.
She’s one of the only artists who could inspire a man to attempt a pants-less crowd surf from the DJ booth – and still maintain complete composure while security gently redirects his ecstasy. That’s the Tara paradox: sacred but cheeky, fierce but featherlight. With all the mastery she holds, she could easily posture, but she doesn’t. She just delivers, time and time again.
Bonus Reviews – A Note from 2024
Last year, I was unfortunately unable to share my yearly review of Desert Hearts. It wasn’t for lack of love – life just got the best of me. Like a few others, I had my phone and wallet stolen at the first Playa Ponderosa edition in 2024. While that moment was rare and in no way reflective of the ethos Desert Hearts or Walter Productions promotes, it shook my rhythm. I didn’t want to phone it in (pun intended), so I chose silence over something half-baked. But the magic that unfolded that weekend still echoes loudly a year later, and I’d be remiss not to sing the praises where they’re long overdue.
– Playa Ponderosa was the rebirth.
For those who patiently weathered the Lake Perris and Coliseum years – our loyalty was rewarded in spades. Playa Ponderosa felt like Desert Hearts finding its true home again. A spiritual sibling to the reservation roots, elevated by the loving support of Walter Productions, and amplified by a community willing to travel two to three times as far for something that feels just as sacred. As someone who’s been to nearly every edition since the beginning, I can say with full confidence: the magic is back.
– VNSSA’s night set was pure demolition with divine finesse.
In a weekend packed with heaters, VNSSA delivered a masterclass in peak-hour precision. Her set hypnotized the crowd with flawless flow, soaring straight into my all-time Desert Hearts top five – alongside legends like Tiefschwarz and Shaded. That nod to “Where’s Your Head At” before diving into “Smack My Bitch Up”? Utter filth, wrapped in genius. Catching her with Nala as the duo Girl Math at Lightning in a Bottle this year sent me spiraling back into a Desert Hearts 2024 rabbit hole – and thankfully, we can relive that set on YouTube.
– Coco & Breezy’s sensual daytime voyage still lingers.
Their set has left a permanent stamp on my existence. They conjured a love-drunk lullaby that melted through the dancefloor like pheromonal perfume. I floated through their frequencies like Pepé Le Pew chasing sonic seduction. And once again at LIB this year, the Woogie stage seemed to echo that same essence: seductive, intentional, uplifting. Bring them back to DH in 2026!
