John Mayer, Goose Light Up Sunday Night At RISE Festival Near Las Vegas [Review/Photos]

There’s something magical that happens when the desert breathes at night. The heat softens, the wind slows, and the horizon seems to melt into infinity. RISE Festival 2025 set out to capture that vibe with a shimmering collision of art, sound, and spirit out on the Jean Dry Lake Bed, about 30 miles south of Las Vegas. With the support of John Mayer, Goose, Patrick Watson, Elderbrook, Forester, and City of the Sun last Sunday, October 5th, the decade-old festival did just that.

For three days, RISE turned the Mojave into a mirage of music, mindfulness, and light. Rufus Du Sol, Calvin Harris, Disclosure, Ben Bohmer, LP Giobbi, and Oliver Heldens helped bring that vision to life during the event’s first two days. But Sunday, the final night, was something beyond even the festival’s own poetic ambitions, with a greater diversification beyond electronic dance music to create a near-religious experience that stitched together the cosmic and the communal, beneath a sky full of glowing lanterns drifting toward the Harvest Moon.

In celebrating its 10th anniversary, RISE has evolved from an experimental art gathering into one of the most spiritual events on the festival circuit. Each year, the festival unfolds as a journey in three stages: The Path, where art and meditation guide attendees inward; The Compass, home to the legendary Sky Lantern Ceremony; and The Horizon, where the night turns into a desert-wide dance floor.

By the time thousands gathered for the lantern release on Sunday, the lake bed had become a living painting. Tens of thousands of tiny flames rose slowly into the night, carrying wishes, grief, joy, and gratitude on the wind. For a moment, the Mojave seemed to exhale light. It was almost impossible not to feel that elusive sense of human unity that RISE promises every year.

The day began in stillness, with City of the Sun easing the crowd into a meditative state. The post-rock duo from New York City kept things instrumental, ambient, and perfectly tuned to the desert’s hum. Then came Forester, whose glowing house-pop textures mirrored the sunlight slowly fading on the mountains. The indie-electronic pairing from Los Angeles dropped RÜFÜS DU SOL’s “Innerbloom” and their own “All My Days” during their set, both met with silent awe and soft dancing, like prayers in motion.

Elderbrook shifted gears with his DJ set. The 32-year-old Londoner injected groove into the gathering dusk with sly flips of Whitney Houston’s “It’s Not Right But It’s Okay”, The Chemical Brothers’ “Galvanize,”, and Empire of the Sun’s “We Are the People”.

Patrick Watson rounded out the evening’s performances at The Compass, just in time to paint the sunset with an introspective palette. His delicate falsetto floated across the open expanse on “House on Fire” and “To Build a Home”. At one point, he told a story about his first friend in Montreal who “used to give me mushrooms and cut my hair,” smiling wistfully before easing into “Here Comes the River”. As a rainbow horizon acceded to the desert moon, it felt like group therapy, set beneath what would soon be a lantern-lit sky.

By the time Goose hit the Horizon Stage, the energy had shifted from reverent to radiant. The quartet of Rick Mitarotonda, Peter Anspach, Trevor Weekz, and Cotter Ellis participated in the lantern lighting ceremony along with tens of thousands of attendees, then brought much of that reflective-yet-reverent energy to bear during a captivating 60-minute set that doubled as the closer of their 2025 tour (upcoming appearances at Hulaween and Goosemas notwithstanding).

 

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The Connecticut-based jam band lifted off in its own right with “Silver Rising”, which had revelers swaying in unison. That gave way to a cloud of dusty dance steps during “Hungersite” before a darker turn into “Creatures”, the group’s improvisations spiraling upward like the lanterns themselves. “Slow Ready” shimmered with synth textures and patience, and “Dripfield” erupted into a desert dance party. Goose’s crescendoing jams, built around Rick’s awe-inspiring guitar work, lent the desert night a mixture of groove, precision, and pure cosmic release.

The temperature had dipped by the time John Mayer walked onto the Horizon Stage around 10:15 p.m., but the air was even more electric thanks to the 47-year-old’s radiant star power. “Las Vegas-ish, how are you tonight?” he grinned, glancing out into a sea of smiling faces beneath a handful of straggling lanterns. “Let’s see if we can take you a little higher.”

He opened with Sob Rock‘s “Last Train Home”, sliding effortlessly between slick pop phrasing and blues grit before easing into “Queen of California”. Switching between acoustic and electric guitars, Mayer played with a calm confidence that can only come from decades of mastery. “This one hits different when it’s the Sunday part of the weekend,” he said after grooving to “Love on the Weekend”.

“Wild Blue” came next, its solo a slow-motion burst of transcendence, followed by “Belief”, which stretched into a desert sermon of tone and truth, the notes hanging in the dusty night.

Then came reflection with “I Guess I Just Feel Like”, followed by a tease of the Grateful Dead’s “They Love Each Other” as a bridge into “Something Like Olivia”. It was as if John had brought just a drizzle of Dead & Company with him into the desert, less than an hour’s drive from the band’s recent home at the vaunted Sphere.

All throughout, Mayer’s humor was sharp as ever. He joked about the arduous Q-tipping ahead of the dust-crusted crowd, suggesting in jest that folks send him their de-dusting stories on social media.

The set built toward a stunning finish, with John dropping a slew of staples from his solo catalog. The closing run of “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room”, “Waiting on the World to Change”, “New Light”, and a climactic “Gravity” had the entire lake bed singing along. He thanked the crowd for supporting the music, and for giving him a reason to keep coming back.

Mayer’s final notes gave way to a spectacular fireworks show set to desert-approved dance tunes. It was the perfect way to end a whirlwind of the weekend, and stopped more than a few exiting festivalgoers in their tracks on the way out.

For all of its production and scale, RISE Festival remains what it’s always been at heart: a human act of wonder. On this tenth anniversary, it felt more essential than ever, a modern ritual for a fractured world.

If this year’s Harvest Moon gathering was any indication, the festival has plenty of room to keep soaring. RISE Festival’s organizing spectacle—the lantern skyscape—is well worth the experience on its own.

Add in a lineup of world-class musicians, and what emerges is a truly special, unique, and surprisingly intimate experience for live music lovers and all other comers.

Below, check out a gallery of photos from the final day of RISE Festival 2025 via Josh Martin. For more on RISE Festival, head here.