Inside Elements 2025, the East Coast Festival Thriving on Whimsy and Surprise
The woods of the Pocono Mountains came alive again in early-August as Elements Music & Arts Festival returned for four days of unfiltered creative weirdness. The independent camping festival has steadily grown into one of the East Coast’s most beloved destinations for electronic dance music fans, proving that its community-first ethos remains at the very core of its success.
For Elements co-founder Brett Herman, the journey to this point has been anything but linear or predictable. “I used to be in the film industry and sort of just fell into doing events out of passion,” he told EDM.com in an exclusive sit-down interview on the festival’s grounds.
What started as a series of underground Brooklyn parties in unassuming locations like warehouses, movie studios, churches, and restaurants eventually matured into a waterfront festival at the Gowanus Bay Terminal in 2013. From there, Elements migrated to Hunts Point in the Bronx and later to sprawling summer camps before finally settling into its current home at the Pocono Raceway in 2022.
That latest move, Herman explained, unlocked the scale that Elements needed. “We’d actually looked at [the Raceway] in 2016, and it was just kind of too sprawling and big for where we were then,” he said. “But revisiting it in 2021 and 2022, it seemed perfect. I wish we had started here, because it’s absolutely incredible.”
The festival’s name, originally intended as a placeholder, has become its defining creative framework. Fire, Earth, Water, and Air each shape the respective stage design and music programming. “It’s a wide canvas that our entire creative and artistic team can play with,” Herman said. “What does an Air stage sound like, feel like, look like? What is a Fire stage?”
That creative philosophy carries into the festival’s lineup. Each stage leans into a different sonic world, and Herman resists the idea of a singular “main stage.” Instead, it’s up for debate among attendees as to which element feels central to their own experience. “In some folks’ eyes, their own main stage is what they see and feel. Which is great,” he said.
The 2025 edition expanded further across the Raceway grounds, pushing its footprint wider than ever before. The stages were pure spectacles in themselves: the Water Stage designed as a giant octopus with lasers firing from its eyes, the Fire Stage roaring with pyro and open flames flickering around the DJ decks, the Earth Stage pulsing with glowing, intricate design and lasers, and the Air Stage feeling like a whimsical treehouse suspended in the forest.
Thursday’s pre-party drew its largest crowd yet, with over a third of attendees arriving early. B2Bs started the party across the grounds on the Water Stage: Cozy Kev & Medicine Place, OkayJake & STVSH, Eater & Flozone, and Distinct Motive & INFEKT, while Wenzday, J. Worra, and Odd Mob brought the grooves to the Air Stage. Tape B and Levity, members of EDM.com‘s Class of 2024 and 2025, respectively, capped off the night with a hotly anticipated B2B.
Friday rolled into a perfectly stacked schedule. Kaskade delivered a crowd-favorite golden-hour “Redux” set that landed perfectly as the sun dipped behind the Fire Stage, while Chase & Status tore up the Earth Stage with an electric drum & bass showcase. Back at Fire, Tape B, Levity and Crankdat each played solo sets before reuniting for a brief but long-awaited “Crankity B” reunion. Rezz closed the Fire Stage with a shadowy, hypnotic set, while over on Earth, ILLENIUM lit up the whole sky with an emotional, firework-filled finale.
Saturday on the Fire Stage was a marathon for the books: SOFI TUKKER into Max Styler into Mau P into Sara Landry, an epic run that never let the energy drop for a second. Over on Earth, EDM.com Class of 2025 star ALLEYCVT kept the crowd moving before DJ Diesel demanded mosh pits (and got them), setting the stage for Zeds Dead’s high-octane headline slot. The Water Stage shook all day with heavy bass from DRINKURWATER, MADGRRL, Cyclops, Reaper, LAYZ, Deathpact and Wooli, while the Air Stage turned playful during Mary Droppinz’s set, which felt like a forest party hidden in the trees. For many, a major highlight came with Tipper’s Sunday set, one of his final performances before his retirement later this fall.
The five themed villages, inspired by Herman two decades of attending Burning Man, became late-night hubs where renegade stages and pop-ups stretched the festival deep into the morning hours. “We’re never one to tell people when to go to bed,” he said with a laugh. “We want people to be participants, not spectators.”
That spirit was on full display. Pretty Lights and Levity drew in crowds for surprise renegade sets out of U-Haul trucks tucked away in the Vibe Villages, fueling the kind of late-night mischief that has become core to the Elements experience. Around every corner, small moments created lasting memories: stumbling upon two giant robots hugging in the woods, finding a hidden inflatable nightclub tucked away in the Vibe Villages, or picking up the phone in a booth labeled “Talk to God” and hearing a voice answer on the first ring.
Beyond the villages, the main stages also held surprises. Virtual Riot and Barclay Crenshaw both stopped by for unexpected sets, reminding us that at Elements, anything can happen. “There are so many small discoveries that I think are often more memorable than some of the key draws,” Herman said.
Even as production scales up, Elements maintains its reputation as a festival of discovery. “We love it when folks say, ‘I saw them back when they were playing for a tiny crowd, and now they’re headlining a main stage,’” Herman gushed. It’s a careful curatorial philosophy that keeps the lineup fresh and reinforces Elements’ reputation as a space for discovery.
At the same time, the team continues to engineer impressive theatrical endeavors. Past editions featured BMX bikers flipping over fire-breathers and wakeboarders launching into the Gowanus Canal. This year, members of Red Bull’s skydiving team parachuted from a plane onto the festival grounds at dusk, leaving jaws on the floor just before the night’s headliners took the stage.
What sets Elements apart isn’t just its programming or its production, but the fact that it has survived as an independent festival in a landscape increasingly dominated by large corporate players. Herman was candid about the challenges.
“It’s been a really difficult journey,” he admitted. “We’ve had two hurricanes and a pandemic in the last four years, on top of being a small independent company in a challenging economic time. We’ve been through a lot, but I’m really grateful that the team we’ve built has persevered and will continue to.”
That perseverance is woven into the culture of the festival experience itself. Attendees consistently describe Elements as one of the most welcoming communities on the music festival circuit. “For three or four days, people are living in a little bit of a happier, peaceful, and more supportive culture,” Herman said. That’s the real takeaway.
As Elements continues to mature and expand, its organizers face the delicate task of growing capacity without losing the intimacy and strange quirkiness that is integral to the festival’s DNA. If this year’s near-sellout proved anything, it’s that demand is only increasing.
Herman, however, remains focused on the small details: the chance encounters, the friendships forged, the moments of pure awe and bewilderment that turn one weekend into a memory that lasts years.
“I hope people leave having made new friends, having had some bucket-list experiences, heard world-class music, and also discovered music too,” he said. “A great party is all about the people, and I think we’ve put that together.”
For fans who trekked to the Poconos this summer for Elements Music Festival, it’s hard to argue. Elements once again delivered a whimsical festival experience that proves the most memorable moments aren’t always the ones you plan, but the ones you stumble into.
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