Yup. There sure are a lot of exclamation points up in that headline, and with good cause: we're heading off for Austin City Limits this weekend, to catch some bands and some tan in the near-hundred-degree sun. Between pre-trip laundering, hydrating, charging our camera batteries and getting all that three-ounce-or-less business handled for the flight, we thought we'd take a minute to let you know about some of the acts we're particularly excited about this year -- especially since there seems to be a particularly strong PNW presence to be reckoned with every single day of the 'fest.

The start of the fest on Friday is kind of like easing in to that hot, soapy, not-too-dirty-yet festival bath. Hometown heroine Brandi Carlile will be getting things going early in the day, and we're hoping her sweet sounds will put us in the right kind of mood to slide over into Ray LaMontagne's late afternoon set -- they're both playing at the AMD stage starting around 2p. As the day darkens, we hope to get a little more gritty with the Cave Singers, and while Cold War Kids and Bright Eyes blow their sets out back-to-back {on the Honda and AMD stages respectively, for those of you following along in your custom-made schedules at home}, we might have to weasel our way forward to get a bigger-than-Bumbershoot-sized helping of Charles Bradley as he closes out the Vista Equity stage just before forever-legend Mavis Staples. As to whether we end day one with Kanye West or Coldplay -- my vote's on Kanye. But seeing as the fest is all sold out except for a few Sunday passes, we might not be able to make it close enough for a photo report. Fingers crossed!

Pending crowd surges (and weather permitting), we hope to also make time to get a little Delta Spirit, Smith Westerns, Kurt Vile, and Santigold into our schedules too!

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at Zilker Park

Holy shit. I almost don't have the proper adjectives for it, nor did I have pen handy to transcribe the total, unadulterated awesome that was the Girl Talk set. After walking out and around the venue to come in a side entrance of the park, we found ourselves smack in the middle of a full-throttle dance party in an expansive mud pit. There was dancing, and cheering, and a stage full of people, and crazy messages on the projector screen like "TAKE OFF YOUR BRA" and "GIVE UP A DOLLAR IF YOU LOVE GIRL TALK" and so on. This mix-up mash-up not-a-DJ experience was like nothing I'd ever seen before, and definitely has lodged permanently on my list of not-to-miss-next-time performances when they come through town. I mean, really -- who has the balls to slice Nirvana up against M.I.A. and then push it into some straight-up Biggie layered with The Cranberries? On top of having the balls to do it, to even have the foresight to conceive of the concept of such pairings and segues -- it's just pure genius. I threw my clothes in the mud and freaked out in a bikini, not caring what I looked like, or how I smelled, or what the fallout would be trying to get dressed (and ride home in a clean car) an hour or so later. The performance was tantric, and explosive, and ended like someone had pulled the plug on the greatest party that ever was -- I'm not quite sure if I could ever get enough of what they dish out.

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at Zilker Park

DeVotchKa, like Andrew Bird, was one of the highlight acts for me coming into the trip. I've got a very close friend who is a huge DeVotchKa fan, and has been so for years and years -- having seen them once, plus hearing her tales of being absolutely enraptured with every show she's seen and every song that's sliced her in two, I knew that they weren't going to disappoint anyone in the room, no matter what size of stage they played. The lights shot off and they came on with a flourish, all foreign-wedding-of-indeterminate-origin plus carnival tuba plus insanely fantastic lighting plus Nick Urata's sexy-slash-saddened vocals -- it was so unbearably perfect! I totally and completely lost it. I was so full of show at that point and so totally blown away from what I had already experienced that their upbeat, symphony-laced set just cut right through me. The whole crowd danced along, improvising to the wandering beats, stunned into statuesque silence and then all-out cheers when a fabric-climbing acrobat suddenly appeared mid-set. It went on like that for over an hour, with Nick taking us up to the very peak of every ounce of energy they could pull out of us, building the last few songs up to such a frenzy that I thought the top of the tent was going to blow right off. And with a cut into darkness, they were done. Fini.

I don't think I have to explain further how completely stunned I was at this point, like I'd just been run over by a car, only the car was made out of everything that's amazing about every mindbending show you've ever been to. The rest of my festival-mates met up with me as we all spilled out of the tent and we all hooked arm-in-arm to brave the mud and watch the second half of Ghostland Observatory's set.

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at Zilker Park

It was, in short, moving. Glorious, even. The thing about the Avett Brothers, outside of all the adjectives I've already used up geeking about them, is that they translate. Fully. They're not a bunch of kids singing about things that haven't happened to them yet, they're just -- they're completely real. Authentic ache and storylines of relationships pour off the stage as they offer out the life they've racked up so far in the form of song. Heartache and bliss filled up the sunny, open field as we were treated to their hour-long set; the sky was dotted with dragonflies and the clouds were doing one of those things clouds do that make the sky look exceptionally huge. So there we were, all big skies and broken hearts with the Avett Brothers. It was about this time that the trip caught up to me and I realized that I was actually physically at Austin City Limits, for real, and about to see a slew of bands in my top-ever list from very close proximity. My beaming seemed to vibe perfectly with the energy of the crowd, and then all at once we shifted gears and headed over to see the Walkmen at an adjacent stage.

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