Inside the Weeknd and Swedish House Mafia’s very last-minute Coachella collab

The sofas scattered around the backstage artists’ compound at Coachella were still wrapped in plastic when the Weeknd and Swedish House Mafia gathered earlier this week to rehearse for the joint headlining performance that will close the first half of the annual desert mega-festival on Sunday night. Through a representative, the Weeknd — who worked with the group on his latest LP, “Dawn FM,” and who appears on “Paradise Again” in the sci-fi-soulful “Moth to a Flame” — called Swedish House Mafia “the biggest DJs in the world” and said he was “ecstatic” to “have them as bandmates for this once-in-a-lifetime moment of collaboration.” The Weeknd will headline Sunday night at Coachella alongside Swedish House Mafia. “Abel was always coming too,” albeit in a smaller role, Angello said, using the Weeknd’s given name. Wassim “Sal” Slaiby, who manages both acts as well as Doja Cat, said the idea to move the performance to Sunday and to expand it to headlining dimensions — on the Coachella poster it’s billed as Swedish House Mafia x The Weeknd — came together quickly in the wake of West’s withdrawal. “We don’t have a hit record on the radio right now but we’re headlining Coachella,” says Swedish House Mafia’s Steve Angello, right, with Axwell.