Bon Iver fans desperate for new material will be delighted to learn that Mr. Vernon has penned ‘Heavenly Father’ for the soundtrack to Wish I Was Here, a Zach Braff comedy-drama starring Pierce Gagnon, Kate Hudson, Joey King and Braff himself. Vernon and his brother Nate wrote it straight after they’d been shown a rough cut of the film by music supervisor Mary Ramos.
"They were enjoying it and laughing, but at a certain point, they just got quiet,” she says. “When it was over, Justin started humming. We talked afterwards about the relationship between Zach's character and his brother [Josh Gad], and Justin and Nate talked a little about their father — all the while Justin kept distractedly humming. Eventually, he sang out the words 'heavenly father.' Before I even left their house, Justin was recording the first version of the song in his downstairs studio. His inspiration was that immediate.”
Cop an earful at NPR
Other specially written tunes include ‘Wish I Was Here’, which brings together Cat Power and Coldplay — an unlikely but apparently very successful union.