Stagecoach 2025 Day One Best Moments: Zach Bryan, Lana Del Rey, Tucker Wetmore & More

It was an exciting first day in the desert for the Stagecoach Music Festival, which annually brings many of the best and biggest country acts in the world to Indio, Calif. for three days of performances.

Still-rising acts like Tigirlily Gold and Alana Springsteen showed why they’re ones to watch in the country space, while newly minted hitmaker Tucker Wetmore showed himself to be on the doorstep of true stardom. Established radio fixtures like Carly Pearce and Dylan Scott delighted with their smash-filled sets, and headliner Zach Bryan capped it all with a two-hour set that heated up an increasingly chilly night in the desert, and showed how far he and his catalog had come since he last played the fest in 2022. (Though not his shirt, as he proudly informed the Stagecoach audience that it was the same he’d worn three years earlier.)

And if there was an artist who created the most advance buzz with their performance, it was probably alt-pop icon Lana Del Rey, making her Stagecoach debut. Del Rey is of course not a traditional country artist, though she is going in a more explicitly country direction on her upcoming new album — and as her performance showed, she’s long held a kinship with country that probably should’ve been more obvious to us than it was at the time.

Here’s eight of the best things we saw across the first day of the 18th Stagecoach Festival, with plenty more highlights no doubt still to come the rest of the weekend.