Bonnaroo 2025 Artist Spotlight: Gigi Perez

Like we’ve been doing for many years now, we’re making it our mission to help you get acquainted with many of our favorite acts from Bonnaroo‘s 2025 lineup. A festival that feels like it’s ever evolving (especially with some big tweaks and improvements in the past few summers post-pandemic), this year marks Bonnaroo’s 22nd installment (and 24th anniversary), boasting not only another great and varied lineup, but also some exciting additions like the brand new, high-tech Infinity Stage, billed as “the world’s largest 360-degree, immersive sound experience” and unlike anything that’s ever been showcased in North America. Back once again in its usual June 12-15 timeframe, we’re counting down the days until another great weekend on the farm.

As we dig through the entire schedule, we’ll highlight a spread of performers spanning across genres and stages, big and small, new and old, to bring you some of the most interesting, lesser-known, and most highly-recommended among this year’s crop of artists. And as our time at ‘Roo approaches, we’ll also be bringing you some special features and full list-style daily lineup guides, to help you plan your weekend ahead of the fest. While these previews won’t span every artist, and might omit some more obvious must-see acts, we hope they’ll serve as a way to help you navigate Bonnaroo’s gargantuan lineup, and to make the most of your busy weekend at the fest!

We’re told tickets are very low and on track to sell out, so grab those right here if you haven’t already (and don’t forget the camping or parking pass), and read on for our Bonnaroo Artist Spotlight!

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Born in New Jersey to Cuban immigrant parents, but raised in West Palm Beach, Florida, singer-songwriter Gigi Perez only released her debut full-length album, At the Beach, in Every Life, a couple months ago, but arrives at her first Bonnaroo- on the main stage no less- already a breakout star, thanks to years of viral success and online fandom. The now 25-year-old began making music in high school, forming the band Wendy Lane while still in her teens. Perez briefly attended school at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, but left in the midst of the Covid pandemic, around the same time dealing with the grief of the death of her sister, and settled in Brooklyn, as she began making TikToks and releasing solo music online. Early singles “Celene” and “Sometimes (Backwood),” which were folky, lo-fi, emotionally-resonant acoustic tunes a la Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, found viral attention online, and Gigi signed a major label deal with Interscope, soon finding herself sharing the stage with artists like Noah Cyrus and Coldplay. Further buzzy singles would follow, leading up to release of debut EP How to Catch a Falling Knife in 2023, filling out the young singer’s sound with more dreamy, etherial, full-band instrumentation, and continuing her knack for penning raw, confessional, deeply personal songs about love, loss, queer identity, and faith. Inexplicably, Interscope dropped Perez not long after, but that didn’t deter her from the fiercely independent production and release strategy she’s employed from the start, independently dropping a few songs in early 2024, before last summer’s “Sailor Song,” a multi-platinum certified, globally charting, breakout hit, which earned more than billion streams and catapulted Gigi to mainstream fame. Once again living in South Florida, to be closer to family, and now signed to Island Records, the multifaceted artist released her aforementioned debut LP, At the Beach, in Every Life, back in April, largely written and produced by herself, and intended as a tribute to her late sister Celene, and pushing her intensely raw, powerful, minimalist writing style to more effective and earnest heights. Perhaps not since Billie Eilish in 2018 has an artist so clearly been on the precipice of becoming an even more gigantic star (she’s arguably most of the way there already), and given her prominent placement, the Roo Gods know it too. This is one set you seriously don’t want to skip.

WATCH | “Sailor Song” (Official Video)