Kevin Bronson on April 7th, 2015

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Priced out of Coachella? Or are you just desert-averse? Fear not: There are local festivals each of the next three weekends, including the April 18 return of Brokechella for its fifth and most ambitious year.

Mounted by DIY promoters cARTel, Brownies and Lemonade, Shifty Rhythms and Department 4, Brokechella returns for a second year to the re-purposed warehouse complex at 590 S. Santa Fe St. in downtown L.A., with a four-stage lineup of emerging local indie-rock, hip-hop, electronic, experimental and spoken-word artists, along with art installations, vendors and more (including “Puppychella”). Included: Babes, Battle Tapes, Figs Vision, Smoke Season, Oyls, Dutch Party, TeamSupreme, Edith Crash and Cozz. Tickets are $20.

Brokechella weekend is bookended by two free mini-festivals that let you get your college on:

• Nochella goes off this Saturday at the Smith Campus Center in Claremont and boasts a lineup of New York electropop band Crying along with Kevin Morby, TV Girl, So Many Wizards, Kera & the Lesbians and Trapdoor Social.

• The second annual KXLU Fest on the O’Malley Lawn at Loyola Marymount University is set for Sunday, April 26, and its lineup does not disappoint: The Muffs, Colleen Green, Tony Molina, La Sera and HABITS. Like Nochella, it is open to the public.

As for Brokechella, it takes a chance this year in doubling last year’s $10 ticket price, but the 2014 event [our coverage here] proved a feast for its constituents’ voracious
artistic appetites, and it was reasonably well-run as well. Over its four-year run, the event has proven unusual not only for its eclectic lineup, but for its artistic democracy: In other words, there’s really no headliner.

“We never say we have headliners because we really believe in the idea of pushing all our artists forward,” says artistic director Negin Singh. “We aren’t celebrity based, we know there are already people out there that do that. We curate based on what we think is the next big sound … Who’s going to be great 12 months from now?”

As past DIY promoters have found, however, throwing even a modest event like Brokechella can be a headache.

“Every year we go through the ‘Are we going to do this again? It’s really hard,’ but we know there’s a whole community of people out there that are going to support us,” Singh says. “There are like 13 permits you have to get, no kidding, and it’s really really hard and requires a brave operations team. … We have a group of really smart and resourceful people and organizations that are willing to jump in to make things happen at any given time. However, we fully recognize how touch-and-go this is, because we are independent we could be shut down at any time and we have to be extra careful and do everything in our power to keep it safe, secure and positive.”