20 artists attending SXSW you might not know!

SXSW 2023 is nearly upon us! The chimeran festival, featuring 10 days of panels, music, movies, is a difficult one to sum up in just one go. Near impossible, really! Thus, we’ll be focusing on highlighting some of the 1006 musical artists performing over the duration of the festival. But don’t worry, I’ve done a lot of the hard work for you. Much like last year, I wrote some code to scrape every single artist from the official SXSW website, put their info in a spreadsheet, and create a 43 hour Spotify playlist to go along with it. I then listened to every single one.

It took a while. but it was time well spent, as you’ll see below! Some of these artists are brand new, some are industry veterans. I tried to keep an open mind while listening through the artists, though, so the genres and sounds represented are quite diverse! There’s a lot of music to get through, so let’s get to it! In no particular order, here are my 20 favorites!

Estereomance

Navigating the border towns of El Paso, Texas and Cd. Juarez, Chihuahua, the magic of their duplicity, both personally and sonically, manifests with their ability to fluidly supersede physical and musical boundaries. Together, their fusion produces a natural and powerful blend of seasoned musicianship, emotive lyricism and dynamic storytelling that dances effortlessly between their bilingual tongues.

Low Island

Tucked away in their Oxford studio, UK-band Low Island have been carefully honing a unique combination of stirring electronics, explosive indie and infectious pop across 2 albums and a host of EPs. It’s a balance they’ve been devotedly fine-tuning over the years, releasing everything on their own label, Emotional Interference.

M(h)aol

Irish intersectional 5 piece M(h)aol have hit the ground running in 2022. Since releasing their debut EP ‘Gender Studies’, the band have performed at Primavera, Green Man, Latitude, and End of the Road, toured Europe with Gilla Band and Shellac, and more. Their debut album ‘Attachment Styles’ is due out early 2023, when they’ll be heading to the States for SXSW, and across the UK and Europe in Spring.

Sobs

Dedicated to the power of pop music, Sobs are Singapore’s premier indiepop propagandists. After releasing a breakout bedroom pop EP Catflap and a dream-jangle LP Telltale Signs that brought international embrace, Sobs now assemble a front-to-back indiepop behemoth – Air Guitar – after a much anticipated three-year wait.

Sorry Mom

sorry mom is a femme punk band from new york city. their music chronicles queer experiences and suburban despair through a nostalgic punk sound. what began as a group of college friends playing music together quickly evolved into something bigger upon the release of sorry mom’s debut EP “Juno Goes to the Big House” in April 2021.

Thee Sacred Souls

There’s something inevitable about the sound of Thee Sacred Souls. It is as if these ageless songs of love and loss have somehow always existed. As if drummer Alex Garcia, bassist Sal Samano and singer Josh Lane—have been playing together for a lifetime already. Produced by Bosco Mann (aka Daptone co-founder Gabriel Roth), their music is warm and textured, mixing the easygoing grace of sweet ’60s soul with the grit and groove of early ’70s R&B, and the performances are utterly intoxicating, with Lane’s weightless vocals anchored by the rhythm section’s deep pocket and infectious chemistry.

spill tab

Singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, part-time tattoo artist, full-time animal lover, and oatmilk connoisseur spill tab grabs disparate feelings, sounds, tones, and textures and pieces them together in a patchwork of lo-fi alternative pop bliss sung mostly in English and sometimes in French.

Obongjayar

A true triple threat, the Nigerian-born, London-based musician Obongjayar pens stirring and spiritual lyrics with a distinctive voice that flits between rap, song and spoken word. Melding afrobeats, soul, rock and hip-hop influences, he has created a bold genre-defiant musicality.

Dead Pony

The sonic aggression of Dead Pony is matched by a no-nonsense attitude and infectious battle ready choruses. From selling out their first headline show at Glasgow’s infamous venue King Tuts instantly to playing world renowned Glastonbury and Scotland’s TRNSMT Festival to joining The Maine, Twin Atlantic and The Mysterines on tour, the last 12 months have been a whirlwind for the young band.

Sylo

Raised in Toronto, ON, Sylo’s take on R&B is inspired by his environment. He was born into a Korean family with religious roots. This inspired him to sing as a child in church services, leading him to learn several instruments at once. Sylo’s musical talents were further enhanced by his older sister who played 90s R&B and hip-hop to full effect. Once he learned how to apply his inspirations into his own productions, he became driven to write and perform his own songs for the world.

MOTHERMARY

The sound Elyse and Larena have created is indeed extremely specific. The contrast of light and dark — of exquisite, ethereal vocals and dark, even gritty instrumentation — is elusive and engrossing, a unique juxtaposition that’s entirely in keeping with the sensibility of sisters who have always refused to be pinned down or defined.

The Lemon Twigs

The prodigiously-talented duo first emerged as The Lemon Twigs in 2016 with their debut LP Do Hollywood, whose showstopping melodies are mined from every era of rock quickly earned fans in Elton John, Questlove, and Jack Antonoff. Go To School, the ambitious 15-track coming-of-age opus, followed in 2018 and solidified the band’s reputation for building grand walls of sound around an audacious concept.

The Courettes

The hardest working band in showbiz! The Courettes is an explosive rock duo from Denmark and Brazil who found the perfect blend between garage rock, 60s Girl Group, Wall of Sound and surf music. The Courettes has the reputation of delivering phenomenal energetic live performances and has shared the stage with artists like The Sonics and Weezer.

Haru Nemuri

Haru Nemuri was named one of The New York Times’ Best Acts of SXSW 2021 and Haru’s debut album, “Haru to Shura,” which crafts songs with elements of “modern urban innocence, constraints and homogeneity, which therefore created a feel of tension and compactness had been highly acclaimed from all over the globe.

OSEES

Crack the coffers, Osees have spawned another frothy LP of head-destroying psych epics to grok and rock out to. You’ll notice the fresh dollop of organ and keyboard prowess courtesy of “Memory of a Cut Off Head” alum and noted key-stabber Tom Dolas…the Quattrone/Rincon drum-corps polyrhythmic pulse continues to astound and pound in equal measure, buttressed by the nimble fingered bottom end of Sir Tim Hellman the Brave and the shred-heaven fret frying of John Dwyer, whilst Lady Brigid Dawson again graces the wax with her harmonic gifts.

Panic Shack

Romi, Sarah, Emily, and Meg were fed up of music being a ‘members-only club’ at its best and a phallocracy at its worst, so in 2018, they decided to do something about it. Cue, Panic Shack. Armed with brash, witty lyrics and killer hooks, they crashed through the UK music scene with a tidal wave of ear-crunching noise. Immediately building up a reputation for their raw, unapologetic live shows and off-kilter songs, Panic Shack prove that DIY does it better.

Albertine Sarges

Berlin-based musician and producer Albertine Sarges is bringing her ingenious art-pop / post-punk sound to the USA for the first time. With her debut album “The Sticky Fingers”, Albertine Sarges presented her take on feminist theory, musings on bisexuality, and mental health. In her new EP “Family Of Things”, her musical endeavours plumbs new depths of unadorned and often self-confessional emotion.

Jack Barksdale

Jack Barksdale is a folk/blues/American singer/songwriter from Texas. Inspired by folk, rock, and blues legends, Jack started performing original music at nine and has already shared the stage with Wynonna Judd, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Junior Brown, John Fullbright, and Hayes Carll.

Sea Moya

Sea Moya is a German electronic Psychedelia band blending influences of Afro-Beat, Krautrock with 70s psychedelic sounds and contemporary electronic music. Passing their ideas through a chaotic system of wires, various instruments, effect pedals and analog recording gear into the computer, where it all gets mangled, sliced up and put back together again, it still sounds human.

Aoife Nessa Frances

Aoife Nessa Frances is a singer-song writer and multi-instrumentalist from Ireland whose sophomore album ‘Protector’ was released via Partisan records on 28th October 2022. In spring of 2020, Frances moved out of the city for the first time in her life. After packing up her things in Dublin, she moved to rural County Clare on the west coast of Ireland, and there, amidst the stillness, she worked on the songs that would become her second album, Protector. The resulting body of work deftly juxtaposes golden hours and arguments, affection and alienation, and above all marks a crucial period of her life that was transformative and left her wiser.