The measured multidimensional spectral response of different light harvesting complexes 
exhibits oscillatory features which suggest an underlying coherent energy transfer. However, 
making this inference rigorous is challenging due to the difficulty of isolating excited state 
coherences in highly congested spectra. In this work, we provide a coherent control scheme 
that suppresses ground state coherences, thus making rephasing spectra dominated by 
excited state coherences. We provide a benchmark for the scheme using a model dimeric 
system and numerically exact methods to analyze the spectral response. We argue that 
combining temporal and spectral control methods can facilitate a second generation of 
experiments that are tailored to extract desired information and thus significantly advance 
our understanding of complex open many-body structure and dynamics.