A big part of the Coachella experience is traversing the grounds, stepping over prone, likely unconscious bodies, while darting from one transcendent live music experience to the next. That's totally fun. Even more fun: not doing that at all.

People are making vows to each other to stop saying, "It's so hot." Early arrivals are free to roam, with space in front of the Coachella Stage still wide enough to play Frisbee. Art pieces and tunnels of colorful fabric are being explored, while sculptures hooked up to propane tanks and a giant Tesla coil are unmanned and silent save for a cardboard sign reading, "Performance at Dusk."

Girls in white-rimmed sunglasses and summer dresses are leaning over the barricades. At a practically precise 5:12 P.M., Silversun Pickups stroll out onto the Coachella Stage to hoots and hollers. We're not quite in Los Angeles, but this four-piece from Silver Lake gets a kind of hometown welcome. For a band on a stage this size, they look strangely like the people watching them.

"It's starting to feel really nice out." A girl says this in the Gobi Tent. This same girl screams and rushes forward when Amy Winehouse limbers her thin frame out from behind the stage. You can already tell this is a different kind of crowd by their hats alone.

The Jesus and Mary Chain have just started playing "Never Understand" and a girl with reddish hair and a white dress drops her purse, looks to her friend and says, "Oh my God. I'm...it's...the Jesus and Mary Chain!" This corner in front of the stage has a fair share of superfans.

We here at SPIN.com wish we could pack you all up in our respective suitcases and bring you along to this weekend's Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which gets going this afternoon.

If it's blazingly sunny, skin-tingling hot, and your ears are being massaged by spectacular sounds, then you know it's Coachella weekend. SPIN.com has its outpost set up at the Renaissance Esmeralda Resort, just a stone's throw from the Coachella gates, and all weekend long, Coachella performers will be stopping in for a quick interview and a respite from the sun.

With just over three days until launch, officials for Indio CA's Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival have exposed the event's timetable, firmly organizing the plethora of performing acts snugly into the restraints of a clock. Sunblock-caked and wisely hydrating fans now know to head over to the Coachella Stage at 7:40 P.M.

This weekend, SPIN.com will be hopping into the saddle for another weekend of festival coverage, this time from the sunny California desert at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. We'll be interviewing bands on camera at our resort suite, and bringing you loads of insight and imagery from the palm-lined polo fields during this three-day affair.

One week from tonight, SPIN.com will be hopping into the saddle for another weekend of festival coverage, this time from the sunny California desert at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. We'll be interviewing bands on camera at our resort suite, and bringing you loads of insight and imagery from the palm-lined polo fields during this three-day affair.