CATERWAUL: Minneapolis fest announces Mike Watt, Dazzling Killmen, Stress Positions and more for 2026 lineup
Founded in 2020, Minneapolis music festival Caterwaul has established itself as an annual showcase of the noisy, iconoclastic fringes of rock, with past performers including the likes of Chat Pile, Flipper, Pissed Jeans, and Uniform. BrooklynVegan has hailed Caterwaul as “a unique mix of noise rock, punk, metal, post-punk and beyond,” while New Noise Magazine has named it “a gathering of some of the best underground bands existing today.”
In a city still reeling from tragedies connected to the federal government’s heavy-handed immigration efforts, Caterwaul stands as a beacon of independent thought and countercultural action, aiming to celebrate the triumph of the human spirit in the face of tyranny.
With the fifth edition of Caterwaul confirmed for June 5–7, 2026 at Minneapolis venue Zhora Darling, the festival’s organizers have revealed 10 of this year’s artists. In alphabetical order:
Dazzling Killmen
Didjits
H.E.A.T.
Mike Watt + The Missingmen
Muscle
New Brutalism
Point Line Plane
Rye Coalition
Season to Risk
Stress Positions
Tongue Party
- Founded in St. Louis in 1990, Dazzling Killmen meld hardcore venom and prog chops into new and challenging configurations that have inspired hordes of younger bands — The Dillinger Escape Plan, notably among them.
- Campy and confrontational, Illinois band Didjits bash out a hard-rocking brand of punk, immortalized on a string of Touch and Go Records releases and the ultimate early-’90s honor, a video on MTV’s Beavis and Butt-Head.
- Not to be confused with the Swedish heavy metal band wielding the same acronym, Minneapolis’ H.E.A.T. is a new entity making distortion-drenched dance punk.
- A man who needs no introduction, Mike Watt is an icon, blazing his own path since the early 1980s. With a legacy that includes Minutemen and fIREHOSE, plus a massive list of collaborators, Watt comes to Caterwaul as Mike Watt + The Missingmen, a trio with guitarist Tom Watson and drummer Raul Morales.
- Baltimore trio Muscle churns out bass-heavy noise-punk bursts, propelled by singer Madison Coan’s fiery vocalizations.
- Guided by the minimalism of the movement from which they take their name, Knoxville’s New Brutalism operates on the knife edge between post-hardcore and noise rock, using aluminum instruments they design and build themselves.
- Bred in the early-2000s electro-punk freak scene populated by the likes of Trans Am and Lightning Bolt, Portland duo Point Line Plane has returned with what SF Weekly once called “aggro keyboard-core of the highest and most demented order.”
- Hailing from Jersey City, New Jersey, the shapeshifting Rye Coalition stormed the scene in the ’90s as a scrappy, sassy post-hardcore outfit, in league with the likes of Drive Like Jehu and Nation of Ulysses. The new millennium saw a reinvention that leaned heavily into classic and hard rock influences. After two decades mostly out of the spotlight, the band will grace Caterwaul’s stage in June for its first show in several years — a one-off, exclusive appearance.
- Kansas City’s Season to Risk enjoyed major label success in the alternative boom of the early ’90s, amidst peers such as Helmet and Quicksand. Active again in recent years, the band’s hard-edged anthems still hit a nerve.
- A ripping hardcore band from Chicago, Stress Positions lays waste via fast drumbeats, rocking guitar leads, and vocalist Stephanie Brooks’ devastating yelp.
- Minneapolis favorites Tongue Party deliver burly, thrashing, noise rock that keeps adrenaline high and heads banging.
3-day festival passes are on sale now: https://ticketstripe.com/caterwaul2026. Stand by for more lineup announcements, coming soon.