Must List: Six Fun Things to Do This Week
Haunted art, campfire drama, and peak summer fun
By Seattle Mag July 31, 2025
The city feels buzzy right now, like we’re catching summer at full tilt.
If you’re trying to keep up, here are a few stories to catch this week: The West Seattle Glass Float Hunt starts Aug. 8 and will be very fun. We also ran an essay about preparing to send your kid off to sleepaway camp. (Oof. The good kind of heartbreak.) And our two latest Top Docs Q&As are up — Dr. Mary Ann Pefanco and Dr. Meghan Nadeau.
Now, here’s this week’s Must List.
Death Cab for Cutie
Aug. 2, 8 p.m.
Climate Pledge Arena
$59+
Twenty years ago, Plans came out and promptly wrecked all of us. Now Death Cab for Cutie is playing the whole album live. Nation of Language will be opening. If you’re even a little nostalgic, it’s worth the ticket.
The Grown-Ups
Now-Aug. 10
Various parks around Seattle
$25+
The campers are asleep, the counselors are making s’mores and trying to hold it together. The Grown-Ups follows a group of staffers at a summer camp trying to shape the future — while the world around them falls apart. It’s smart, funny, and outdoors, with real (or theatrical) fire. We’re very into the premise.
The Double
Now-Aug. 10
LIT Immersive, Seattle
$42+
The Double is an immersive thriller set inside an abandoned office — the kind with flickering fluorescents and glitchy monitors — where something’s clearly off. Inspired by Dostoyevsky’s novella, the story unfolds around you as you explore: sit at a desk, open files, watch the characters move behind glass. There’s even a cocktail bar built into the experience. It sounds so strange and unforgettable, and there’s no stage or assigned seating.
Spirit House
Now-Jan. 11, 2026
Henry Art Gallery, Seattle
Free
Spirit House brings together 33 Asian American and diasporic artists exploring what it means to move between worlds: to speak to ghosts, to inhabit haunted spaces, to be reincarnated, or transformed. The show is inspired by the tiny spirit houses found all over Thailand — built to give shelter to the unseen. It’s about memory, ritual, and the places where life and death blur.
Watershed
Aug. 1-3
Gorge Amphitheatre
$44+
Go get hot. Stand in the sun and the dust, scream the lyrics, and wear your cowboy boots. Watershed’s back at the Gorge for its 13th year, with Jason Aldean, Dierks Bentley, Bailey Zimmerman, and Washington’s own honky tonk king Zach Top. Find the full lineup here.
Magnolia Summerfest
Aug. 1-3
Magnolia Playfield
Free
If you want a festival without chaos, this one’s for you. Magnolia’s been throwing this neighborhood party for over 60 years, and it’s all very charming — vintage cars, a kids’ parade, an art walk, and a beer garden tucked right into the village. It’s summer in Seattle, exactly how you want it.
Visit our events calendar for more ideas.
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