The House Show of the Year: Denver’s Cowapalooza ‘25 [Recap + Photos]

This past Saturday marked an incendiary day in the heart of the Mile High City – Cowapalooza. A show-stacked, community-driven day of unadulterated mayhem in Capitol Hill, this event was hosted by local psychedelic grunge cosmonauts – Rugburn, and it surely delivered everything it promised. A full day of fun-soaked, cow-themed, house party vibes with over 10 local and regional bands. 

Imagine your favorite college house party, complete with kegs, only really dope folks, a blow-up swimming pool (complete with an Olympic swimmer), a hand-squeezed lemonade stand (thanks, Maria!), a trippy traditional flash tattoo station (@micahwhited crushed), a garage rooftop for the best viewing hangs, endless shenanigans, one flash rain storm, and ultimate vibes from all the bands who bared their sweet souls on stage. 

All bands I had personally never had the pleasure to see perform before, the musical curations included a wide array of everything mostly under the rock-ish umbrella – punk, psych, fuzz, garage, indie, and everything in between. But for real, do some digging and check out these bands, they all go hard as hell. 

The amount of fun is truly easiest to encapsulate in pictures – so here we are! Thanks to everyone who put the time and energy into making Cowapalooza such a damn good time. 

And if you’re in Colorado, a few of them, including Rugburn, Bitchflower, and Los Toms, will be throwing it down at Psych’s Peak – a psychedelic music festival happening THIS weekend just outside of Denver.  See ya there!