Yeah Yeah Yeahs perform at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, Friday, April 12 in Indio. (Rodrigo Pena/Freelance Photo
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs had their Coachella Coronation on the main stage Friday night.
The art punk band was led by its Queen, Karen O, who came on stage in a gold lame cape and a headpiece, waving her microphone like a scepter. Later she would be swinging the mic like a mace.
Joined by the Hollywood Gospel Choir on the opening song, if she wasn’t a queen, then Karen O was definitely channeling her inner James Brown.
When she wasn’t singing, she was speaking to her subjects, at times in a screech not unlike what you might have heard from a frontman of a C-Level ’80s hair band.
There was also a sense of humor about the whole thing.
“If I could see you right now I would say ‘I wanna see some hands’,” she told the crowd.
She also kept yelling “Friday” and “Coachella” and dedicated “Maps” to the choir, a bunch of other people and, in that ’80s voice, “all the lovers” in the crowd.
Other highlights included “Gold Lion” and “Zero,” but the strongest part of the set was closer “Heads Will Roll.”
Like the red queen in Alice in Wonderland, Karen O screamed “off with their heads,” but with dance moves that were more akin to Richard Simmons’ “Sweating to Art Rock.”
For that finish, the crowd shall bow to you, Queen Karen.