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Inside Elements 2025, the East Coast Festival Thriving on Whimsy and Surprise

The independent music and camping festival returned in a big way to the Pocono Mountains, where we sat down with co-founder Brett Herman to talk growth, surprises and community. The post Inside Elements 2025, the East Coast Festival Thriving on Whimsy and Surprise appeared first on EDM.

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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.

@crankdat
nfg! #crankdat #tapeb #levity #dubstep ♬ original sound – CRANKDAT

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.