Billie Eilish
Courtesy of Do LaB
Of the many side stages that’s proliferated the grounds of Coachella over the years, the one that all the real music heads know is Do LaB, the electronic dance oasis tucked at the corner of the festival that’s mastered the art of surprise.
Since its inception in 2005 as one of the festival’s first art installations, Do LaB has outgrown its humble origins to become a musical behemoth of its own with a separately curated lineup — that often leans electronic and underground — and a tradition of booking “surprise” big-name acts that are only announced day of. Diplo, Skrillex, ZHU, and ODESZA are just a handful of the dozens of stars who’ve graced its stage, and in recent years, the hype has spilled into the mainstream. In 2024, Billie Eilish took over the stage for a surprise set that led to Do LaB seeing its biggest crowds to date — as ever, the only thing predictable about Do LaB is its unpredictability.
“When we get bigger names and the surprises, they love playing these sets with us because the pressure is off. They get to show up and be an artist and be experimental,” Dede Flemming, one of the three brothers who founded Do LaB, says. Celebrating their 20th anniversary this year, Dede, alongside Josh Flemming and Jesse Flemming, break down the pivotal moments of Do LaB history that’ve led them to becoming the coolest stage at Coachella.
2005
Josh Flemming: We were given an opportunity to bring an art installation to the middle of the field out [at Coachella]. Our friends had this dome that we set up, and we tried to create an environment with a water feature that didn’t work very well. Everybody was showering in it and drinking from it. We were going for a little oasis. Little did we know the winds in Indio were so strong that everything we set up was mangled the first day.
Jesse Flemming: We snuck in a couple of small speakers because we always bring music with us wherever we go. A bunch of our friends were DJs and we were playing music, but it wasn’t anything official. The whole festival ended around midnight and all the music shut off, but we kept playing. And then everybody ran over to our area and it turned into this party. That’s the first time we realized, “This could be more than an installation.”
2006
Dede Flemming: The interesting thing about this year, we found out Paul Tollett, the owner of the festival, overbooked two DJs in the Mojave tent. They reached out to us and he put those two DJs in our dome and gave us a little extra sound, a little extra lighting, and that was the green light for us to go for it and actually play music. It altered our course.
2008
Courtesy of Do LaB
Josh: We were really trying to focus on these 360 environments where you’re not just looking at one focal point at one stage, but you’re inside of the space and get lost in it. That became our thing: trying to create this immersive environment.
Dede: Coachella, they give us a little bit of a footprint and we just exploded out of that area and we just kept going bigger. The way we’ve always done is like they give us an inch, we take a mile, and we went way bigger than I think they wanted us to, but we just kept throwing a giant party in the middle of the field and going bigger with the installation and the music and the sound.
Josh: This wouldn’t get built today.
2009
Courtesy of Do LaB
Jesse: We’re just messing around with different ideas. At the time, we thought this was the greatest thing in the world. Looking at it now, it’s pretty scrappy looking.
Dede: [In] 2008, we had yet to meet Paul Tollett. And Thursday night before doors, we got word that Paul was at our installation and he wasn’t happy about the Do LaB sign that you see here because there was no branding at Coachella [at the time]. They told us we had to take that sign down. We met him for the first time and somehow convinced him to let us leave it up and we got to kind of be one of the first branding things inside of Coachella.
2010
Courtesy of Do LaB
Jesse: This might have been one of the first years our lineup was promoted. It wasn’t just the music that was taking the center focus. We had this performance troupe, Lucent Dossier, [on] a stage specifically for performers. This is where we want[ed] to actually be more of a stage and less of an art installation, and you can clearly see it in the design. We kind of bumped heads [with Coachella] on it a little bit because they wanted it to be a more of a whimsical field of art and we were trying to be a stage and hold our own.
2011
Courtesy of Do LaB
Josh: This is called fish fry, and this is probably our lowest point. I was really into suspension bridges and architect [Santiago] Calatrava, and drew a lot of inspiration from his work and made this thing and we barely got it done. It barely stood up.
Jesse: We definitely pushed it too far outside the box and we laugh about this one. This was our… I don’t want to say worst… it’s still interesting looking. It’s just like, what is it?
2014
Courtesy of Do LaB
Josh: This is the first year we introduced utility poles [into the design]. I’m constantly looking for new building techniques and I [was] like, why don’t we just stick utility poles in the ground and build off those? We call these Eepeerts, tree-pees backwards. People love these things.
Dede: The big thing about this year was they moved us out of the middle of the festival and they put us in a corner where you’ve known us to be for the last 10 years. It changed everything. We now had a full backstage that wasn’t accessible to the whole festival, which meant that we could treat it more like a stage and not a project in the round. Around this time we started saying we’re the official sixth stage at Coachella.
Jesse: We had Gorgon City before they got big; Jonas Rathsman, Kidnap Kid. ODESZA’s on here, too, long before these guys were popular. [Coachella] was doing electronic music but they were focusing on the really big acts or more EDM type of stuff. We were bringing the underground, house and bass music vibes.
2015
Courtesy of Do LaB
Jesse: I don’t exactly remember [when we started doing surprise guests], but I do remember how it happened. We had a lineup booked and somebody dropped out for some reason and we just started making some calls. Bonobo was the first big artist that was outside of our sphere of friends that we got to come and do a surprise set. The surprise was so popular that we decided to leave a couple surprises every year. [Editor’s note: That was this year, 2015.]
Josh: This [design is] called Big Fish. Again, this is the evolution of our building techniques. We actually built a tree house that hung from the tree and we ran everything from the tree house which is pretty sweet.
Dede: Paul [Tollett] came over and [was] really blown away. We had this realization that we can’t redesign another stage like this next year. So we did this for 2 or 3 years which was a huge relief.
2017
Skrillex
Courtesy of Do LaB
Dede: We were [actually] gonna have Kaskade do a surprise set the second weekend, and that was the year Kaskade was headlining. He closed the main stage with the biggest crowds that the main stage had ever seen at that time [during weekend one]. And [for weekend two], he was gonna headline and then do a surprise set with us. We were completely tight-lipped about it. And on Thursday before weekend two, Kaskade tweeted it.
Jesse: He couldn’t hold it in.
Dede: The three of us got an email from head of security, Paul Tollett and [Tollet’s right hand man] Bill Fold saying this can’t happen.
Josh: Because the area we’re in isn’t designed to accommodate that many people.
Dede: That’s the year that we ended up with Skrillex in place of Kaskade, which we were like, don’t tell anybody, we’re just gonna do it and if they get mad at us later, we’ll deal with it.
2018
Fisher
Courtesy of Do LaB
Jesse: We had FISHER and Chris Lake, and they both played at 3 or 4 in the afternoon. Nobody really knew who these guys were at this point, I guess they were just starting to blow up, but their afternoon sets were the biggest afternoon crowds we’ve ever seen. Everybody came over to see these guys. They still tell us to this day, Chris Lake and Fisher and their management, that this set was the moment their careers really took off.
2022
Rebecca Black
Courtesy of Do LaB
Jesse: I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t really know who [Rebecca Black] was, but we looked it up and were like, “Well, fuck it, let’s do something totally off the wall and different from what we normally do.” We’ve been trying to mix in more pop stars and do things that are fun and different. [This] might have been the beginning of us getting into the poppier worlds.
2022
Courtesy of Do LaB
Jesse: Skream kind of switched gears and got into making more house music, but the last few years he’s been doing Skream dubstep sets. We had the opportunity to [have him do] that, and our roots go back to bass music and dubstep. It was really cool for us to have that. That was a big one.
2023
James Blake
Courtesy of Do LaB
Jesse: James Blake coming out and DJing hip-hop stuff was pretty special. It was totally different than what we’re used to doing and I think he was playing vinyl. That’s kind of rare these days.
2024
Courtesy of Do LaB
Josh: We’ve never seen crowds this big in our area ever. It must’ve been over 20,000 people.
Jesse: The cool thing is she went to Coachella and she specifically asked if she could do a surprise set on the Do LaB stage. We were like, Billie Eilish knows what the Do LaB is? This is fucking awesome.
Dede: Again, that came about a month or so prior to Coachella and we had to be super tight-lipped about it because she headlined the festival the year before, so if word gets out, it gets shut down because everyone would want to come. It’s a safety issue.
Jesse: We just gotta top Billie Eilish [now].
2025
Jesse: Last year, Anderson .Paak did a [DJ Pee .Wee] set as a surprise and this year he called us and was like, “That was fun. I want to do it again, put me on the lineup.” We’re really trying to push the bounds and be at the forefront of electronic music and what’s about to pop in the next couple of years.
I think we’re bringing a lot of flavor to Coachella that they’re not already touching on, which is cool because they already cover so many genres and so much amazing music. We’re trying to weave in between all that. As far as the surprises [go this year], we’re gonna do our best, but give us a break if we don’t deliver. We might have made it really hard for us.
