On November 15, 2017 the fourth edition of the festival was announced and tickets went on sale immediately, alongside a cryptic 29-minute audio file Please Listen #1 that included voice recordings and music clips. A second audio collection called Please Listen #2 was released alongside several Instagram posts with videos featuring discussions about The National and Sharon Van Etten performing. The organizers later revealed that there would be no "marketed lineup" for this fourth year of the festival, though through his Twitter feed Justin declared many of the bands from the Please Listen podcasts as being highly likely, while later making note that they've not "announced anything". The week before the festival started Vernon noted ""you could find out basically everyone who's playing if you really wanted to"", and soon after the official Eaux Claires app started publishing playlist that seemed to confirm many of the hinted artists, though the official release of the lineup didn't occur until the day of the festival.