Sounds Of O+ Festival 2013 #2: Heaven

Y'all know I love a festival. Being around well-curated music for days at a time is nigh on heavenly to me. But sometimes, festivals can go above and beyond even that personal experience and not only provide miles and miles of glorious music and art, but a worthwhile cause to boot. Witness the O+ Festival, held this coming weekend in scenic Kingston, NY (with Left Coast activities too). O+ not only brings together some seriously great bands but seeks to provide health services for musicians. It's a darned noble cause, worthy of much attention and heaps of praise. I'm highlighting a selection of bands on this year's O+ roster that definitely merit a closer look.

I just got my mitts on Heaven's new LP, Telepathic Love, earlier this week, but I've scarcely been able to listen to anything else since it came into my life. The trio of collaborators has concocted a record full of shimmery, psych-tinted gloss that has me thinking more than a little of Britain in the early 90s, which, given their list of influences (Ride, Spacemen 3, Stone Roses to name a few), makes a bit of sense. Lead song "Colors in the Whites of Your Eyes" is one of my favorite songs of this entire year, and swirls with a calculated, haunting ferocity. A song, and a record, to fall in love with.