Rindge native Shaun O’Loughlin and his band, Kingston 530, have already advanced farther than they ever expected in a national-level battle of the bands competition, and now need your vote to contend for a spot on stage in London to play on the same bill as Stevie Wonder, Pearl Jam and Paul McCartney.

The five-person band is one of only 10 finalists, selected from more than 250 bands, in the Hard Rock Café Ambassadors of Rock Battle of the Bands Finals. The winner will be decided by an online vote, which ends Sunday at midnight. The winning band will then fly to London to play at the Hard Rock Calling in Hyde Park beginning on June 25.

“We signed up for the competition just on a whim,” O’Loughlin said. “We were practicing one day and found an entry form for it, and it was the last day you could send it in. So we decided to send a song in and see what would happen,”

A few days later, he heard the band had been selected for the qualifying round and was invited to play at the Hard Rock Café in Boston. They moved on to the Boston area finals and won that competition as well.

A panel of celebrity judges then narrowed the field again to the 10 remaining finalists.
“We just signed up with the idea that it can’t hurt to try, so every step along the way has been a big surprise,” O’Loughlin said.

Boston-based Kingston 530 includes guitarist Ben Caccia, vocalist Chris Ferrara, O’Loughlin playing bass, drummer Will Sibilia and guitarist Kevin Sullivan. The band has only been playing together for a year and a half, but has been able to develop its own style of acoustic pop/rock. Listeners have compared its music to bands like Third Eye Blind, Goo Goo Dolls and Train, O’Loughlin said.

Kingston 530 is currently in third place in the final online voting, but had been as high as second place just a few days before.

Jim O’Loughlin, Shaun’s father, said the whole family has been helping the band campaign for votes.

“It’s been a collective effort between family, friends, and everyone they know to get people to vote for them,” Jim O’Loughlin said. “The great thing is Shaun is so humble, and he doesn’t want to make a big deal out of it. But you can see the energy growing inside, knowing this is truly something that could happen.”

O’Loughlin , 22, who recently graduated from the University of Rhode Island, has been playing guitar since he was in seventh grade, but only started playing bass guitar to fill a vacancy on the Conant High School band. He bought his first bass guitar at a pawnshop in Keene for $140.

“I’m a little nervous, but it’s not as much nervous as excited, because we never thought in a million years that we would make it this far. So just to have the opportunity is exciting,” O’Loughlin said.

Even if his band doesn’t win, it will still benefit from the national exposure the competition has given it, he said. In fact, some of the finalists from last year’s competition have signed to major record labels.

After the competition Kingston 530 plans to spend the rest of the summer recording an album of its own, O’Loughlin said.

“Our drummer and our lead guitarist both graduated from Berklee College with degrees in music engineering. We’ve got a lot of equipment, so we’re going to record and edit it ourselves.”

To listen to a song by the band and to vote for Kingston 530 in the Hard Rock Café Ambassadors of Rock Battle of the Bands Finals, go to http://battle.ambassadorsofrock.com/kingston530.