Though it's not as easy a drive for music fans in the contiguous United States as, say, the current Coachella festival, the Kokua Festival in Hawaii may be equally as memorable an event.

The creation of singer-songwriter Jack Johnson and now in its eighth year, the festival has consistently featured an interesting array of internationally acclaimed artists, all for the benefit of the Kokua Hawaii Foundation--a nonprofit foundation founded by the singer and his wife supporting environmental education in Hawaiian school and communities.

Those who've heard of the event but have never managed to attend will thus be enlightened--and quite pleased--by the newly released Best Of Kokua Festival: A Benefit For The Kokua Hawaii Foundation album.

A live anthology featuring some of the most memorable musical moments from the festival--featuring Johnson and a number of acclaimed guests--the album boasts the same warmth, precision and musicality that pervades all of Johnson's music and, cliché as it

Lukas NelsonLukas Nelson sounds like just any average kid out there who decided to start a band. One night while in college, he met some guys at a Los Angeles Neil Young concert, and that's how things got rolling.

"Me and [drummer] Anthony [LoGerfo] were the most hardcore fans there--we were headbanging the whole time," he explains. "That night we went on a midnight surf at the pier and I got stung by a stingray. And I was having so much fun I kept on surfing. And we kept playing music together and that's when I knew it was gonna be fun.

Coachella, the giant three-day music festival that takes place every April in Southern California's (normally scorching) Indio desert, for all intents and purposes kicked off 2012's entire summer music festival season on Friday, April 13. But the weather was so un-summery this year, confused festival-goers might've thought they'd somehow accidentally teleported to Britain's rainy Glastonbury when they boarded the free Coachella shuttle. Rain? At Coachella? A festival famous for dry heat in the near triple-digits? It really almost didn't feel like Coachella at all, as shivering music fans huddled together in scarves and woolly hats instead of their usual sundresses and teeny American Apparel bikinis; the video screens on the two outdoor stages were lowered out of fear that the harsh desert winds might topple them over; and the queues for coffee, tea, and hot chocolate snaked considerably longer than the lines for frozen margaritas (definitely a Coachella first). It was enough that when

Madonna and Avicii [Photo: Seth Browarnik/Worldredeye.com]"Electronic music has been a part of my life, since the beginning of my career," Madonna told an enormous crowd at he 2012 Ultra Music Festival in Miami Saturday night. She pandered, " I can honestly say that a DJ saved my life," referencing the classic Indeep song that became a dance music mantra. The pop queen made a surprise appearance before Swedish producer and DJ Avicii's set, who kicked it off with his remix of Madonna's latest dance floor banger, "Girl Gone Wild."