Olivia Rodrigo, The Cure & More

Attendees who showed up for the festival’s opening hours on Thursday and Friday were treated to a pair of excellent young rock outfits from Madrid with all-female lineups and three-part lead vocals. Aiko el Grupo took the Estrella Damm main stage on Thursday, while Las Petunias graced the smaller Port stage on Friday, but both electrified audiences with heavy hooks, infectious energy and the unmistakable excitement of an up-and-coming group overjoyed to be there with their friends, family and fans.

British-American singer-songwriter Dev Hynes proved a typical late-afternoon delight on the Revolut stage on Friday, drawing from a 15-year catalogue as Blood Orange that boasts some of the best-enduring alt-R&B from the period, and proving himself an underappreciated guitarist as well with some scintillating fretwork. But his set’s most striking moment was its opening, when Hynes sang the first verse and chorus to The Smiths’ timeless 1985 indie anthem “How Soon Is Now?” with just his own cello playing as accompaniment — making him sound more than ever like the 21st century’s answer to Arthur Russell, one of Hynes’ own longtime heroes.

“These guys are gonna be headlining festivals soon” was an easy thought to have about Brooklyn art-rockers Geese during their early-evening Thursday set on the Occident stage — even before realizing that they’d actually essentially be headlining Primavera that very night, with all the acts supposed to follow on the bigger Estrella Damm and Revolut stages getting rained out. Geese already looked and sounded the part, with the quartet’s arena-ready jams — somehow both minamlistically tight and expansively loose — matching the ferocity of the growing thunderstorms pelting the stage, and frontman Cameron Winter resembling Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher more than ever with his flowing hair and Adidas track jacket. Geese’s anthems might not quite be “Live Forever”-worthy yet, but based on the crowd singalongs to “I See Myself” and “Au Pays de Cocaine,” they might not be that far away there, either.

Galway, Ireland indie rockers NewDad seemed overjoyed to be opening the Estrella Damm stage on Friday afternoon, with frontwoman Julie Dawson excitedly proclaiming that the band was currently playing to “definitely our biggest crowd ever!” Perhaps to commemorate the occasion, Dawson introduced what she called “a very special cover,” instructing listeners to “sing along if you know the words.” The band then launched into Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ death-disco classic “Heads Will Roll” — an inspired choice for the melodically downbeat but rhythmically muscular outfit — as the crowd gleefully sang along to Dawson’s “Off with your head/ dance till you’re dead!” commands.

If you were looking for a headlining act to bring enough sunny vibes to erase memories of the previous night’s washout, goth paragons The Cure wouldn’t necessarily be your most obvious choice. But over nearly 50 years, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers have also amassed a staggering catalog of jangly, joyous and impossibly catchy pop hits — many of which the band pulled out on Saturday night, even playing upbeat ’90s hits like “Mint Car” and “Wrong Number” (and fan-favorite ’80s B-side “2 Late”) for the first time this decade. Not to say the band has gone totally bubblegum all of a sudden, with a couple more droning and despondent cuts from acclaimed 2024 album Songs of a Lost World and some wisely chosen deep cuts from 1992 breakup LP Wish added for balance’s sake. But the pop singles were what had the crowds jumping and chanting, and what even had Cure frontman Robert Smith smiling and shimmying, apparently having an absolute blast putting aside his King of Gloom reputation for the night.

At the time, it seemed like Skrillex came from an entirely different part of the dance world than Edward Maya & Vika Jigulina, with that collab’s crossover hit “Stereo Love” dominating top 40 radio at the turn of the 2010s, while Skrillex was becoming the brostep leader of the bubbling EDM scene. But a decade and a half later, it’s all just dance music history — and even as he’s shapeshifted multiple times to still be on dance’s vanguard 16 years later, the dance superstar still got one of the biggest pops of his livewire late-night DJ set on the Revolut stage by dropping the instantly recognizable “Stereo” accordion hook, reminding us all of how fun those dance years were at all levels, and how far we’ve all come since.

Few, if any, artists across the entire weekend brought it for their set quite like California art-pop singer-songwriter Sudan Archives, who delivered a full-bodied, brilliantly staged and immaculately performed one-woman show that featured her wearing an electric violin like a bow and arrow, and leaping from instrument to instrument and even into the multitudes to party with the super-charged audience. But the most memorable moment of her set may have been when she enlisted a fan from the crowd to come on stage and dance for her, specifying: “But you gotta be a freak.” One excited female fan who volunteered proved up to the task, taking the stage a few songs later to flash the crowd her underwear and twerk to the strains of the artist’s “Freakalizer,” sending the already-electrified crowd into an absolute frenzy.

Aspiring pop stars looking to put together an arena-caliber show on an indie-level budget should look to Gelli Haha’s example. The Idaho-born pop performer brought the spectacle on Sunday with little more than a big-top tarp, a few trampolines and some hula hoops, inspiredly integrating all of her circus props into the dance routines performed by her and her all-red-clad backup dancers. None of it would have landed, though, if it all didn’t match the energy of the music itself — with her set somehow consisting solely of dance-pop gems, each of which would be good enough to be the one song to get you to check out a new artist like Gelli Haha for the first time.

U.K. rapper Little Simz was among the most appreciative artists to grace one of the main stages across the weekend, repeatedly raving about how honored and fortunate she felt to get to play for such a massive crowd at the Revolut stage on Saturday night. She more than earned the privilege, not just with her rich and highly acclaimed back catalog across the past decade-plus, but with a kinetic and visceral Primavera performance that made you feel all aspects of her artistry — including a portion of the set where she took the audience to “Club Simz,” as she donned a pair of headphones and got behind the decks for a number of her more floor-ready tracks. She worked the crowd masterfully, leading them in “ooh ooh” chants and jump commands, and even got her backing band to report to the dancefloor, as they busted a few moves of their own, before reassuming their instruments for the rest of the set.

Good to be able to call on one of the world’s biggest pop stars for an unscheduled drop-in, huh? The most-buzzed-about performance from Primavera’s three full days is sure to be the one that wasn’t on the official schedule until just hours before: Olivia Rodrigo, unexpectedly taking the Occident stage for a blistering 11-song set that mostly focused on her rock rippers and built yet more hype for Friday’s You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love release. But the biggest moment of Rodrigo’s set featured an encore performance from one of the previous night’s superstars: Robert Smith of The Cure, who dropped by his young acolyte’s set to perform with her on the brand-new duet “What’s Wrong With Me,” to be featured on the aforementioned Pretty Sad, and sounding pretty good in its live debut.