  We calculate the masses and weak decay constants of flavorless ground and
radially excited $J^P=1^-$ mesons and the corresponding quantities for the K^*,
within a Poincar\'e covariant continuum framework based on the Bethe-Salpeter
equation. We use in both, the quark's gap equation and the meson bound-state
equation, an infrared massive and finite interaction in the leading
symmetry-preserving truncation. While our numerical results are in rather good
agreement with experimental values where they are available, no single
parametrization of the QCD inspired interaction reproduces simultaneously the
ground and excited mass spectrum, which confirms earlier work on pseudoscalar
mesons. This feature being a consequence of the lowest truncation, we pin down
the range and strength of the interaction in both cases to identify common
qualitative features that may help to tune future interaction models beyond the
rainbow-ladder approximation.
