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Day four at RBC Royal Bank Bluesfest and the name of the game is “hurry up and wait.” But if you’ve got copious amounts of time to kill, an outdoor music festival with multiple stages in the middle of a gorgeous summer day in the nation’s capital is probably where you’d want to be. As we waited for interviews to be confirmed, we actually got a chance to sit back and enjoy the tunes. Here are two finds that blew us away:

The PepTides

We actually first encountered this group as we were taking a shortcut from one stage to another via the Canadian War Museum, when a four-part harmony of voices sliced through the air and stopped dead in our tracks. These four singers, a keyboardist and a guitar player all dressed in outfits reminiscent of a 1950s Sears catalogue immediately put us into a trance.

The PepTides actually have 10 members in total, a few more of whom we saw during their performance on the Bluesfest main stage later in the afternoon. Mixing their stunning vocals with funk beats underneath a soulful sound, an abundance of theatrical dance moves and kitschy quirks, they defy any genre or description. One must simply see them to believe them.

http://www.thepeptides.com

Lukas Nelson

The Electro Stage at Bluesfest has more than lived up to its name this year, hosting some of the biggest names in electronic music including Chromeo, MSTRKRFT, Dj Illo, Tommy Lee and DJ Aero and so on, although not all of the acts scheduled here fit that bill.

Lukas Nelson sounds like both he and his guitar have been picked up and dipped into the soul of rock-n-roll. By the time he had strummed his third chord we had dropped everything and ran out to watch, as Willie Nelson’s son invoked the gritty soul of his father’s musical abilities with a badass blues style that is distinctly his own.

http://www.promiseofthereal.com/

RBC Royal Bank Bluesfest goes until July 15. For the full schedule head to http://www.ottawabluesfest.ca and be sure to follow us on Twitter @MuchMore for real time coverage of all our #Bluesfest antics.

- Sarah Dawley