Billboard's cover this week celebrates Coachella's Cool Kids and the desert's real headliners, Hozier, Father John Misty and Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes.
Hozier on his first festival experience, which involved a grueling eight-hour wait followed by a near-religious experience:
"Christ, I was 16," he reflects. "I waited in the pit for hours to see James Brown. My back was breaking, and I was fainting throughout the day. I got to be in the front row, and it was incredible."
Hozier on this time last year: "I'd made a conscious decision to write music for a much smaller audience. I did not think it would resonate with mainstream culture."
Talking to Josh Tillman, who will perform as the subversive folk singer Father John Misty at this year's Coachella, is not like talking to other people.
"The function of art is very different from the function of some kind of Hegelian prescription for decent civilian living," he begins, winding himself up for what becomes a series of pretty riveting rants. "I'm not creating an instruction manual for decency. I'm trying my best to give some oxygen to my own experiences, good or bad."
On his latest tour: "People are responding to me as they would a pervert on the bus."
Just four years ago, Brittany Howard, the 26-year-old singer and guitar ace for the soul-rock crew Alabama Shakes, was working 12-hour days at the Athens, Ala., post office, dreaming of a career in music. "I was like, 'Please, God, let me quit my job,' " she says with a cheery dose of Southern drawl. "'I'll do whatever it takes to never work again.'"
On playing Coachella for the first time:
"Sometimes I don't know what to say to 100,000 people at once, but it sure is cool to look at them," she says.
