Fans Are Vandalizing Coachella Billboards And Artists Are Rolling With It

With Coachella's first weekend kicking off today, there are a lot of billboards promoting musical artists along the highway from Los Angeles to the festival site in Indio. We at Stereogum noticed, and we aren't the only ones. At least two of the billboards have been defaced, and both artists have adjusted on the fly.

For instance, Snow Strippers, the electronic duo out of Detroit, had this billboard in place:

But early Thursday morning, graffiti artists painted over the Snow Strippers ad with the word GRIM in giant letters that covered the entire billboard:

Fortunately, Snow Strippers are signed to Surf Gang, the label/collective headed up by super-producer evilgiane, a longtime graffiti artist in his own right. Giane simply covered up "GRIM" with a new Snow Strippers promo that, to me, looks a lot cooler than the original:

So that's cool.

Clairo also has a billboard, which used to say, "I got charmed by Clairo at Coachella," a reference to her recent album Charm. Thanks to some strategic editing by taggers, the sign now reads, "I got fucked by Clairo at Coachella." She tweeted an image of the vandalized billboard with the caption, "If you’re lucky."

Indicline, the activist art collective that got its start producing the widely criticized Bumfights series in the early '00s, took credit for the Clairo defacement. They wrote on Instagram, "Late Stage Capitalism headlining the Main Stage of America."

Clairo commented, "Unfortunately for me , this is very cool . Lol"

She also responded to some haters on an Instagram post about the vandalism. To one user who posted “With a dad who’s Chief Marketing at Pepsi, Converse, Top Golf, I bet this was pre-planned,” Clairo responded, “You guys are sooooo fucking laaameeeeee Why would I ever pretend to vandalize some misogynistic thing onto my own billboard ? What ?”

To another who wrote “I believe you, but you’re still an industry plant lol,” she responded, “I’m not fighting with incels”

Motorists on their way to Coachella will apparently have plenty of time to mess up more billboards thanks to some serious traffic jams: