Coachella didn't just get LCD Soundsystem when signing the reunited act to a headliner slot. It also gained a new dance tent—if only for this year—designed by LCD’s figurehead, James Murphy, and 2ManyDJs’ David and Stephen Dewaele. Their Despacio setup, a favorite if uncommon experience at music festivals overseas, made its American debut Friday at Coachella (where it will continue throughout the weekend), though not quite with the same line-snaking, sweaty-dancefloor splash as the SoCal fest’s Yuma Tent three years ago. During the experience’s final hour yesterday (closing early to accommodate separate live sets by both LCD Soundsystem and 2ManyDJs), a modest crowd gathered inside the dark danceteria, in awe of the seven McIntosh speaker towers blasting the Dewaele brothers spinning vinyl. While the Yuma sound leans deep and dank, Despacio prefers the ebullient and funky and unabashedly retro. It's a love letter to the underground disco of the late 1970s/early 1980s and the house music it birthed, and even if it's music wasn't glorious on its own and a pleasure to hear at a commercial dance music-dominated event—especially with the unoppressive and funk-accentuating rumble from the speaker towers—it offered a necessary history lesson to younger revelers regarding the roots of the EDM they would celebrate elsewhere on the Empire Polo Field.

There’s a lot of lived life in cherished soul singer Mavis Staples’ raspy, guttural voice. But it suitably evokes the sentiments and affirmations in her song selections perfectly, and it held a two-thirds-full Gobi Tent in rapt attention Friday afternoon, likely catching those merely retreating from the sun off guard. She impressed the audience even more by working the stage and interacting often with the audience on both serious and lighthearted occasions. At one point, she reached into it to accept a bouquet of flowers and a card, with a look of gracious surprise on her beaming face. As for the setlist, she leaned on more recent material, including Ben Harper’s “Love and Trust,” but the goosebumps came with “Freedom Highway,” which her father Pops (who led Mavis and her siblings in the charting gospel/R&B act The Staple Singers) wrote for the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. “I won’t turn around,” she roared repeatedly, each exclamation more resonant than the last, followed by an applause cue she’s more than earned: “I’ve come too far, y’all!”

During Savages’ Coachella debut in 2013, singer Jehnny Beth hyper-focused on her performance, which might’ve offered a little too much tension given the breaking-point edge of the music played by her bandmates. But for this year’s showing, Beth’s performance—no doubt honed by constant touring—was undeniably more dynamic and confident. She seemed not only empowered by the skill and force of the musicians behind her, but by the wider breadth of emotions and maturity exhibited on this year’s Adore Life, as well as an audience that clamored for physical contact (which they got, in the form of two dives from the front barrier). The English foursome played to a third-full Mojave Tent—per the diminishing appeal of guitar rock at Coachella—but anyone who came stayed glued to the spot. Post-punk may be more obscured by grooves and synthy choruses these days, but it's hardly on its death bed, and no one may be leading the fight more stridently or effectively than Savages.

“Lager, lager, lager!” shouted the packed Sahara Tent along with Underworld's Karl Hyde during that act’s biggest song, “Born Slippy (Nuxx),” but this wasn’t more of the drunken party that colors most people’s assumptions about Coachella. The English electronic pioneers’ thrilling, hourlong set—shortened by technical difficulties—was an exercise in synthesized transcendence, both band and crowd relishing and shuffling in the long, rising numbers that often climaxed during their final choruses. It was a staggering contrast to the incessant peaking of the commercial EDM heard throughout the day from other performers. But Underworld demonstrated how to start sparely and build a wall of melody that hits the emotional sweet spot sooner than later, and usually more than once per song, aided by a visual complement that included jaw-dropping lasers and an overhead, Q*Bert-like, LED cube structure (and frequent “glowruptions,” or glowsticks tossed in sync with certain musical cues). The setlist delighted, from longtime favorite “Dark and Long” to the beautiful but restrained throb of “Low Burn,” from the recently released Barbara, Barbara, We Face a Shining Future—a title that seems to suggest the old guard of electronic music still has a place in the musical conversation. Underworld certainly made the case Friday night.