Darker Waves is a one-day new wave and post-punk festival that C3 Presents stages on the sand at Huntington State Beach, which is an unusually literal setting for a genre that spent four decades singing about the cold. It debuted on November 18, 2023 with New Order and Tears for Fears headlining, thirty-three bands across three stages, and a bill that ran from The Human League, The Psychedelic Furs and The B-52's to Cold Cave and Molchat Doma. The booking logic is a wide read of one era rather than a strict nostalgia bill: late-seventies post-punk, eighties synthpop, and the contemporary acts still working in that vocabulary. The 2026 edition lands on November 14 with Morrissey and Smashing Pumpkins on top, and the undercard shows the range, with Simple Minds, Adam Ant, The Psychedelic Furs, Soft Cell, Gary Numan, The Damned, Buzzcocks, Bad Religion, Circle Jerks, Silversun Pickups, Modern English and Cold Cave. It is a single November day at the beach, so the headline sets land after dark and after the temperature drops. Dress for the sand at night, not for the parking lot at noon.