Every year, the Coachella lineup is filled with gems—and on one of the bottom lines of this year’s poster is a hidden gem in the form Vs Self, a screamo rock band from Apple Valley.
A mix of melodic guitar lines, down-tuned chords, lo-fi production and emotive vocals have helped the band find an attentive audience, and their recent math-rock-meets-emo punk banger “Yesterday by Beatles Or: Imagine by Yoko Ono as Sung by John Lennon” exploded on TikTok, exposing the band to viral fame.
You can catch the charming screamo soundscapes of Vs Self at Coachella on Friday, April 11 and April 18.
“(Coachella) was definitely something that our booking agent was trying for. … One of the people who books it lives in Pomona, and that’s where our practice space is,” vocalist/guitarist Kyle Schlenker said during a recent phone interview. “Apparently, he likes to throw on some local bands from Pomona who don’t exactly make sense, genre-wise, or just the level we’re at doesn’t really make sense for Coachella. It’s funny, because I was always like, ‘I don’t think we should be trying for Coachella, because I don’t really think it’s ever going to happen.’ … I would never go to Coachella if we’re not playing it.”
Schlenker discussed the mixed feelings that result from a smaller, D.I.Y band getting the opportunity to play at one of the biggest music festivals in the world.
“If I’m being honest, it’s not the most excited I’ve ever been to play a festival,” Schlenker said. “We’ve played festivals like Best Friends Forever fest, New Friends fest, and Dilly Dally fest that were all emo and screamo bands that I love. There are a few bands that I’m really excited to see at Coachella, but for the most part, we’re very out of our element. It kind of sounds like I’m talking down on Coachella or something—like it would even matter if I do talk down on Coachella. I’m very excited to be playing it, but it was just funny to me that I was just discounting the entire thing even being a possibility, and then it ends up happening.”
Both hardcore fans of the band’s emotional rock movements and people who know Vs Self from TikTok will be catered to at Coachella.
“It’ll probably just be all the hits—or what we call ‘all the hits,’” Schlenker said. “… I always try to play the things that I think the most people are going to want to hear and be the most excited about. One, it’s fun to play a show to really excited people, and two, if we’re playing close-ish to home, it can be easy to fall into a trap of being like, ‘Oh, well, if we’re playing close to home, everyone here has probably seen us before, so it doesn’t really matter if we play all the songs that they want to hear.’ … Obviously we want to throw some newer stuff in, too, for ourselves, but I always try to keep the set of what people are probably going to want to hear.”
Viva! Pomona music festival creator Rene Contreras curates Coachella’s Sonora stage, where Vs Self will be performing, and the band is the latest in a line of Pomona-area bands invited to perform at Coachella after performing at a Viva! Vs Self started rehearsing in Pomona out of necessity, Schlenker said.
“We started in the high desert area, like Apple Valley, Hesperia,” he said. “But now we’re spread out a tiny bit. The other two members live in Upland, and I live in South Pasadena, and Pomona is just where we could find a practice space that was available and reasonable and somewhat in the middle.”
Coachella Valley musicians had been featured at Coachella fairly regularly—until the last two years. Giselle Woo and the Night Owls played in 2022, and DannyLux did in 2023, but there were no local bands in 2024, and there are none in 2025. Schlenker was shocked to hear this news.
“There should definitely be at least something local,” Schlenker said. “I think all three fests I was talking about feature locals, but then again, it’s screamo and emo. It’s a lot more community-driven. … I guess their version of locals is bands from Pomona. Pomona doesn’t need any fucking help. There are a lot of venues there. A lot of bands come through Pomona. I appreciate it, but they could have given our spot to a band from the Coachella Valley.”
As Vs Self has grown in popularity, Schlenker has had to free the band of some of their D.I.Y sensibilities.
“A lot of bands come through Pomona. I appreciate it, but they could have given our spot to a band from the Coachella Valley.”
Kyle Schlenker, on the lack of local bands at Coachella 2025
“We’re at the point now where we don’t do our own booking, and sometimes just even letting go of that takes a lot,” said Schlenker. “Once you’re trying to book full U.S. tours, or trying to go to Europe—and we want to go to Australia and Japan—it just becomes so daunting. It’s one thing to let go of in order to make sure that we still have time to do all the things that we think of as more important, as far as the band goes. There are a lot of times when it just feels like we’re making sacrifices, and sometimes stuff slips through the cracks.”
Schlenker mentioned one show in particular that would’ve been handled better by the band itself.
“We had always told our booking agent at the time that we want our shows as cheap as possible, and as accessible as possible, and if at all possible, only at all ages venues,” Schlenker said. “In a perfect world, we’d want it to be $15 max, but we realized that wasn’t really possible, so $20 max. … That show, it was all ages, but it ended up being $26 for the tickets, and we didn’t know until the tickets went live. To make matters worse, it looked like the tickets were $37 because of the fees and everything, and (the venue is) literally on the exact same street, the opposite corner of the block, as this small D.I.Y. venue that we played at so many times for $10 or $15. … Luckily, we were able to get them to drop the price to $20, but I feel like at that point, it had already been done.”
Going from $10 shows to a $600 music festival is a huge leap, and Schlenker said the “sell-outs” label has been tossed around.
“It happens a lot more publicly,” Schlenker said. “… But more than anything, we got a ton of DMs from people being like, ‘This is insane to see, but you deserve it.’ I was so nervous before we announced (Coachella) that everyone would be like, ‘Wow, what the fuck happened?’”
Schlenker said that, because of the band’s star level in relation to other Coachella acts, Vs Self was able to negotiate the fest’s radius clause. In 2019, The Desert Sun reported that the clause includes restrictions preventing artists from “playing any festival in North America from Dec. 15 to May, and from playing any ‘hard ticket’ concerts (as opposed to ‘soft ticket’ events such as county fairs) in Southern California during that same period.” Schlenker said this clause “would really hurt a smaller band.”
“When we got the contract, and I saw the radius clause, I was like, ‘Oh God, this is kind of fucked,’” Schlenker said. “The only reason it didn’t completely scare us off is because we were already planning on taking a step back from shows for a second to try to finish writing an album. … Once we switched booking agents, he started talking to (Coachella), because we wanted to do the tour directly afterward. Originally, you’re not even supposed to announce anything until after the fest is over. But basically, no one is buying a ticket to Coachella because of us, and they know that.”
For more information, visit www.instagram.com/vs_self.
