To our knowledge, the just-concluded Coachella festival included only one musician with Coachella Valley roots performing on a stage: Nick Sacro.
Sacro is the drummer for Los Angeles/Coachella Valley hybrid band Garb. He also performs with Jane Remover and the band juggler, and took the stage with viral shoegaze rock project Wisp at this year’s Coachella. Wisp’s TikTok-famous songs meant the Sonora tent was full of fans both weekends—along with a handful of locals supporting Sacro and his huge drumming gig.
I caught up with Sacro before his performance on Sunday of Coachella 2025’s second weekend.
“Everybody in this band is my friends I’ve met over the past couple years,” Sacro said. “Nat (Natalie Lu) is a new friend. … The guitarist in this band, his name is Max (Epstein), and I tour with him with Jane Remover, and he’s been throwing me gigs here and there. He gave me the alert: ‘Hey, we need a fill-in drummer,’ so I was like, ‘Oh shit, that’s me.’ He’s been helping me out … so shout out to him.”
Sacro reminisced about his previous visits to Coachella.
“I’ve been coming since 2010 … to 2015-2016, but I had never paid for a ticket,” he said. “I was always sneaking in. You didn’t have to scan your bracelets at the time, and I was just hopping fences. One of my buddies, his aunt has a property out here, and she got free tickets every year, so we would go to her house during Coachella fest, to ‘hang out,’ quote, unquote, and whenever the coast was clear, we would make a break for the gate, and end up behind some food vendors or something. We definitely almost got caught a million times and jumped over a bunch of hedges.”
While Sacro currently lives in L.A., he made hometown friends and family proud with his Coachella debut. Wisp’s Weekend 2 audience included a handful of people from our desert’s music scene, including as Andy Rivera, Michael Jones and Sage Jackson from Face Facts, and Jack Harris from KILLFLOOR.
“Everybody who I play with, they’re all from L.A. or somewhere else, not the desert,” Sacro said. “… It’s been really cool. It’s a full circle moment. My parents are super-proud; my mom lives out here still, and she’s watching the livestream and everything. She’s just really happy.”
The crowd went nuts for Wisp, which is primarily the solo recording project of Natalie Lu. While reverb-heavy vocals and trippy tones incited jumping and headbanging, the spotlight was on Lu, with her backing band obscured by shadows and flashing lights. For a majority of the set, there was a huge white sheet covering Sacro’s drum shield.
“Any opportunity is an opportunity,” Sacro said. “I’m just grateful to be here. I work a regular day job out in L.A., and I get to tour with some really cool people, and I get to meet a lot of really cool people. I still play in some smaller bands and vibe on the DIY scene. I think every musician who does session work wants something of their own, but having friends who you play with, even if it’s not the music that you’ve written, is still a good time, and it’s still fun. At the end of the day, I just want to play drums.”
Sacro said the move from the Coachella Valley to Los Angeles definitely enhanced his music career.
“I started playing for a band called Kraus out in Los Angeles, and I was just trekking it,” he said. “Everybody was kind of like, ‘Damn, you’re crazy. You’re gonna play this show and then go back to the desert?’ … You’ve just got to hustle. It was getting to a point where I felt like all the facets of my life out here were kind of running dry, so I decided to move to L.A. to continue to play for more bands. I got the Jane Remover gig because of Kraus, and people seeing me play through that. I also played for juggler, because somebody saw me play. If you want the work, you have to move to L.A. There have been times where my mom is like, ‘You should just move back to the desert, because you’re on tour so much.’ Even though my apartment is like a glorified closet at this moment, you’ve got to stay out there, because you’ve got to be around it.”
Sacro said he hopes more local groups have the opportunity to perform at our backyard fest in the coming years.
“A lot of bands out here deserve to play a festival such as this,” he said. “There are a lot of great bands out here. Years ago, they used to (include more locals). One of my friends’ bands, You Me & Us, played, and it was because they were local, and they were showcasing local talent.
“This is our valley. Even though I don’t live here at the moment, I still fucking represent the desert,” he said. “I love bragging about it. I definitely feel that if a bunch of people outside of the desert are going to throw a festival here, they should start showcasing some talent. Support everybody.”