Review: Lost Woods Music Festival reached new heights in 2025, offering the ultimate escape in a Cedar Falls forest

Review by Glenn Houlihan and Violette Bray

Returning to the Cedar Falls forest for the third iteration of Lost Woods Music Festival felt like stepping into another dimension — a place where we could escape the chaos and stress of the real world for a single night of bliss. The brainchild of Iowa’s hardest-working musicians, the Cedar Falls-based indie-pop group Salt Fox, Lost Woods 2025 went bigger and better while retaining its authentic, intimate identity. 

For those unfamiliar with Lost Wood’s M.O.: it is, quite literally, a music festival in the forest. This simplistic description sells the experience short; there’s a stage, sure, and incredible musicians. But it’s everything else that makes Lost Woods so distinctly memorable: the artwork, the installations, the underlying sense that everything here has been designed with care, compassion and creativity. 

While the fundamental ethos and environment of Lost Woods remained the same this year, regular attendees will have noticed changes. Some, like the expanded food court, were subtle. Others, like a 40-foot Ferris wheel, less so.

Reflecting on the site’s expansion, Salt Fox keyboardist Jacob Pauli told us, “We just went nuts on the mower one day and made new paths. We thought, what if this is the year that it’s about escaping a little bit and wandering.”

We caught up with Salt Fox in the artists’ lounge — a fancy name for, well, a big tent backstage. (This is all taking place in a forest, remember?) Our conversation ranged from how the band organized this year’s impressive bill — “I feel like the people that actually arrived here are people that really share our beliefs about what’s cool,” reflected guitarist Andy Fuchtman — to Merv, a forklift-driving local legend who helped the band install the festival’s centerpiece water fountain. “Merv is an angel. We loved meeting him,” laughed Pauli. “He’s a huge hit as far as our social media presence. Everybody loves Merv.”

It turns out Michael Rogers, the band’s charismatic vocalist, masterminded the festival’s exceptional decor. As Pauli points out, Rogers has “a keen sense of vision and aesthetic,” a vision that transformed an old metal shelf from the University of Northern Iowa ($10 surplus sticker still visible) into an interactive display of eccentric vintage records. Other iconic installations included a working organ — which was frequently played by excited attendees — and two spinning Timex cases, one proudly displaying WWE and comic book figurines, the other hosting a curious collection of trading cards. (We, for instance, didn’t know Topps produced a strangely hypnotic set of Beverly Hills 90210 cards in 1991). 

Besides the turning Ferris wheel — Lost Woods Top Tip #1, make sure you hop on twice, once as the sun sets, the second time as the headliners wrap up in pitch black — lay an interactive art exhibit where attendees could tag messages onto a blank canvas.

What really underlines the spirit of kindness and inclusion at Lost Woods is how attendees interacted with the festival’s countless exhibits. As Pauli noted in an Instagram video after the festival, there were “Over 2,000 people in the woods, nobody stole any of the WWE wrestlers that were on the Timex display. Nobody stole them. That’s, I think, unique. And that leads me to the art installation — four giant canvases that anybody could write anything they wanted on there, and there was nothing hateful. It was all love, it was all uplifting, and that is unique.”

After leaving our “Listen to KRUI 89.7 FM” message on the canvas (an obligatory shout-out to the University of Iowa’s student radio station where we host a disco house show together) we checked out the food court. Lost Woods Top Tip #2: Get the loaded nachos at Blue Barn BBQ and the Lost Woods lavender lemonade special at Easy Peasy. We loved Easy Peasy so much we went back for another round of lemonades and their famous apple nachos. Festival food perfection. 

With all the fun unfolding in the festival grounds, it’s easy to forget there was also a jam-packed lineup of stellar music to savor. Clad in jeans and T-shirts, Iowa City four-piece Dearborn transported Lost Woods to 1990s Seattle with a tight grunge-infused set — definitely an Iowa band to keep an eye on. Playing cuts from their recent new EP Flux4D, Sun Centauri (a dynamic collaboration between Iowa City artists Alyx Rush and Jim Swim) took us to the fourth dimension of celestial sound in their flight suits. Jim Swim returned to the mainstage later on for a solo set, yet his relentless focus on collaboration means solo never truly means alone. He was joined by several friends, including the talented Avery Moss, for a rendition of one of our favorite songs, “Dessert.” 

Salt Fox delighted the Lost Woods home crowd with a wonderfully vibrant set. For those in attendance who didn’t know the lyrics — and there weren’t many of them — the visuals guided everyone through the band’s infectious choruses. “I will love you,” sang everyone during the euphoric “STARS,” “’till the stars burn out.” Salt Fox’s sound was rendered even richer by the introduction of drummer Chris Hansen, and their latest single “COVER MY EYES” was a festival highlight.

“I could cry right now. I’m fighting back tears. Thank you so much,” said Rogers during the set, as the product of hundreds (thousands?) of hours of labor materialized before them. 

Hippie Sabotage’s genre-transcending chillwave was the ideal closer for the festival. The Sacramento-based duo joining the bill constituted a major coup for the Lost Woods organizers, and the headliners didn’t disappoint. Brothers Kevin and Jeff Saurer took turns leading on guitar and DJing at the back of the stage, flying through their extensive repertoire of trap-laced psych rock. With the help of trusty LV press passes, we enjoyed most of their set from backstage and were incredibly impressed by their audience interaction and genuine care for their fans. More than a performance, it was a meaningful exchange of energy which epitomized everything Lost Woods stands for.

Until next year, Cedar Falls forest.