By Max Stewart

There are music festivals that try to be everything to everyone, and then there’s Shaky Knees, which has spent more than a decade building a personality that feels distinctly its own. This year, the festival returns to Atlanta’s Piedmont Park September 18–20 with The Strokes, Twenty One Pilots and Gorillaz atop a lineup that somehow stretches from punk and Britpop to hip-hop, electronic music and whatever wonderfully strange universe Danny Elfman currently occupies. More than anything, Shaky Knees has always rewarded wandering… like afternoons when you head toward one stage for a band you know and come back talking about somebody you didn’t. With that spirit in mind, here are eight sets we’re especially looking forward to this weekend.

Danny Elfman: There may not be a stranger or more intriguing name anywhere on this year’s poster. Elfman’s career is almost comically difficult to summarize: frontman of Oingo Boingo, composer behind some of the most recognizable film and television scores of the past four decades (the bulk with Tim Burton), and more recently an industrial-tinged solo artist who seems perfectly happy getting weird again. Seeing how that entire musical history gets condensed into a festival set is half the fun. In a weekend filled with great rock bands, Elfman feels like the true wild card, which may include the Beetlejuice score.

Geese: If Shaky Knees has traditionally excelled at catching bands somewhere between “you need to hear these guys” and “how the hell did they get this big this fast?,” Geese arrive in exactly that sweet spot. The New York band has become one of the most talked-about young rock acts around, with Cameron Winter’s elastic vocals sitting over songs that can sound loose, theatrical, funky and slightly unhinged. This band is most certainly in a special moment and do not miss their Friday afternoon set.

Fontaines D.C.: Few bands have made the leap from gritty post-punk promise to legitimate arena-sized rock band as convincingly as Fontaines D.C. Their music still carries the gray skies and sharp edges of their Dublin beginnings, but the scope has gotten enormous. Grian Chatten has become one of rock’s most magnetic frontmen, and songs like “Starburster,” “Favourite,” “Boys in the Better Land” and “I Love You” should sound absolutely massive spilling across Piedmont Park. This feels less like catching a band on the rise and more like watching one realizing, in real time, exactly how big it can become.

Gorillaz: Damon Albarn’s cartoon experiment long ago escaped the laboratory and became one of modern music’s strangest institutions…. a project where alternative rock, hip-hop, electronic music, soul and pop can all live under the same roof. “Clint Eastwood,” “Feel Good Inc.,” “DARE” and “On Melancholy Hill” alone provide enough communal festival moments to close a weekend, but Gorillaz shows have always been about the larger spectacle. After three days in Piedmont Park, disappearing into Albarn’s animated universe sounds like a pretty good way to finish things.

LCD Soundsystem: There are few better places to hear LCD Soundsystem than outside, after dark, surrounded by thousands of sweaty people who have been standing in a park for three days. James Murphy has built a catalog around getting older without necessarily getting wiser, obsessing over records, losing friends, finding friends and dancing through the existential dread anyway. “Dance Yrself Clean” remains one of the great slow-burn live detonations, while “Someone Great,” “Tribulations” and the immortal “All My Friends” can turn a field full of strangers into something resembling a very large, very emotional house party.

Villanelle: Part of the joy of Shaky Knees is looking past the enormous type at the top of the poster and finding the names printed farther down. Villanelle is one of this year’s most interesting swings, a young British band with Gene Gallagher (son of Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher) taking on guitar and vocal duties. The famous surname will inevitably draw some initial curiosity, but the real reason to get there early is to see what the band does with the opportunity especially with fantastic tunes like “Placebo” and “Opportunity Arising” that seemingly draw most from the grunge world. Shaky Knees has a long history of giving emerging acts a field full of new ears, and there’s something especially fun about seeing a young British rock band with that particular bit of musical DNA step onto an Atlanta festival stage.

Pavement: For a certain breed of music obsessive, Pavement playing Shaky Knees is practically reason enough to show up Saturday. Stephen Malkmus and company spent the ’90s perfecting the art of sounding like they might fall apart at any moment while somehow writing songs that influenced an entire generation of indie rock bands. “Cut Your Hair,” “Range Life,” “Gold Soundz” and “Harness Your Hopes” have aged less like artifacts and more like a language that countless bands have been speaking ever since.

Psychedelic Porn Crumpets: Australia’s Psychedelic Porn Crumpets back it up with a wonderfully overstuffed collision of psych-rock, fuzz, prog and riffs that seem engineered to knock over whatever beer you’re holding.

That’s ultimately what makes this Shaky Knees lineup so appealing. Shaky Knees has never just been about checking names off a list. It’s about walking into Piedmont Park with a schedule and inevitably abandoning half of it because something loud, strange and interesting is happening on another stage. This weekend, there should be plenty of reasons to wander.