Stornoway’s irresistibly summery brand of indie—they call it “maritime pop”—has made them one of the most hotly tipped groups by UK music critics in recent years. Since forming in 2006, after meeting at Oxford University, they’ve been named The Guardian’s “favorite new band,” played alongside the Foo Fighters and Jay-Z on the prestigious BBC live music show Later… With Jools Holland, and received much acclaim for their self-produced debut album Beachcomber’s Windowsill, which will be released in the US on August 10. Led by singer-songwriter Brian Briggs, a former ecologist and self-confessed “nature fanatic,” the band is in its element outdoors—favoring playgrounds, parks and campsites for videos and live performances. The songs themselves richly evoke the gentle shapes and colors of the British countryside, mixing simple strummed guitars with folksy instruments (including violins, accordions and trumpets), the melismatic melodies driven forward by Briggs’s boyish vocals (delivered with an unmistakable Bristol twang). On tour, according to Briggs, they’re restlessly curious: “We’re not the sort of band that just hangs out backstage. We’ll always go and explore.” This often leads to unusual adventures, especially given the band’s apparent tendency to attract chance disasters (a recent rooftop gig in New York synced up with a fire across the street and a car crash on the pavement outside). NOWNESS asked Stornoway’s keyboardist Jonathan Ouin, a keen photographer whose soft, washed-out images regularly grace the group’s blog, to document summer in his own unique way, capturing a day of the band’s mild-mannered antics at this year’s Camp Bestival music festival. Meanwhile, we caught up with Briggs to talk touring highs and lows—read the interview here.