Song of the Day

Perfect for the chilling temperatures is the latest from Austin world-folk duo Her Mana. Emilie Basez and Kate Robberson return with their latest single “Suena,” a slow, tender tune made for slow dances with long, locked gazes. Produced by Jim Eno and featuring the Ibiza String Ensemble to brighten the thoughtfully equipped negative space in the song and to elevate Basez and Robberson’s angelic voices, the new single is a delicate breadcrumb of new music leading to their show at the Paramount on Sunday, November 16th.

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It’s the last day of October, so it’s time for one final spooky toast to our October Artist of the Month. Teethe was formed up in the DIY music enclave of Denton, all students of the University of North Texas. Now, with streaming numbers on their side, a move to Austin, and a European and east coast tour filling out the rest of their year, the quartet is champing at the bit to keep their incisors sharp and their momentum growing.

While their debut album was an amalgamation of their individual songs synthesized together, their new...

For years now, we’ve been in a bit of a cuffing season with former KUTX Artist of the Month Skateland‘s synth-driven dream pop that’s as delectable and ethereal as the roller rink of his stage name origins. It’s cozy, groovy, and hypnotic all at the same time. After years of breadcrumbing us singles, he’s releasing his debut album Heavenly Bodies, and he’s celebrating the album release tonight at 3Ten ACL Live with Holy Wire and Somebody Somewhere before climbing out of the covers and from under the warm, soft lights and kicking off a 10-day tou...

Yesterday, I watched a video of a guy unsuccessfully attempting to get a beached dolphin back into the ocean, and as luck would have it, today I get to write about a song from a dolphin’s POV. And a louche little devil they are. “Eep Eep” is the appropriately named title and single from the Austin quintet The John-Pauls’ new album, out today. While most of the album features the group’s brand of Texas post-punk, the single is a feisty, punk one-off. That dolphin has an agenda, or at least a lot of one type of feeling. Largely re...

I’m not sure there’s a better way to say you’re basically a space punk band than to name yourselves MoonKill, and, hey, that’s exactly what this Austin quartet has done. But it’s not like floating-in-space post punk; it’s more like if the Thunderdome had a Tatooine location. They’ve been busy back in the studio working on their sophomore album (due out next spring), and in the meantime you can catch their high octane, power chord-forward energy this Thursday at Valhalla. Time your upstairs pit stop at Marinara Miracles appropriately.

“Full Stop” appears on...

ACL Fest may be but a flicker in your rearview mirror at this point, but our ACL Fest content is still poppin’ fresh. LA’s Claire Chicha is Spill Tab, a lo-fi alt pop project focused on incorporating rhythms from across time and the globe and nestling them warmly in her dulcet, mezzo soprano jazz vocals. Not surprising considering someone of French-Korean origins, born in Thailand and raised across three continents. Chicha’s humble beginnings as an industry intern have led to her own center stage success, being called one of SXSW 2022’s “buzziest artists” by The Fader. Singing in both Engl...

They’re back, baby! After a several-year hiatus, the Aussie-meets-Austin rock group Go Fever returns to retake Austin by storm. Known for putting out banger after absolute banger, their “vibrant jungle print, but in rock music” brand with earwormy hooks and lyrics that warrant an English-class close read have been profoundly missed across Austin’s stages.

With a little warm-up reunion a couple of months ago, courtesy of the DIY, underground music champion For Spite Creative, Go Fever plays an official reunion show tonight at Radio/East with Matthew Logan Vasquez and Magic Rockers of Texas. And as we ge...

From cellos and pianos to guitars and drums. So goes the story for classically trained musicians (and sisters) Kenzie and Laila Crowe, and together the duo are Girl Tones, a project set on unlocking the secrets of the universe to discover what it is to become more than mere sentient beings. The nascent indie rock duo have toured with Silversun Pickups and fellow Kentuckians Cage the Elephant while having their first releases produced by Cage guitarist Brad Schultz.

Girl Tones popped by the KUTX tent last weekend during ACL Fest to perform a stripped-down, but still energetic...

Austin duo Briscoe made their musical imprint back in 2023 with their coming-of-age in the Texas Hill Country debut West of It All. Now having toured extensively (“from Canada to Cancun”), their latest album Heat of July is a different type of coming-of-age output for the folk-rock duo, literally written on the road largely without any instruments within arm’s reach and steeped in metaphors of growth that happen with expanded horizons: larger arrangements, bigger harmonies, and waxing poetic on their stint with highways being the only constant. The roster on Heat of July is expanded too, wrangling in musicians from g...

Houston’s Aaron Page is a rising star. The R&B artist recently released his debut EP Before I Go, a meditation on vulnerability and conversations that lead to life’s great romantic pivots, for better, worse, or just more confusing. He stopped by our tent backstage at ACL Fest to perform his viral hit “Lord Knows,” a smooth, sultry inner monologue from Page on a classic tale: see a lady at a club, run through your lines and execute, hit it off, and leave together.

Check out all of ACL content here.

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Lush melodies, decadent fashions, and a good hang to boot. L.A.’s Lucius is no stranger to the KUTX airwaves or Studio 1A, and we always get excited with antici….pation. And they delivered. Not only did they stop by to hypnotize us with a deeply lovely performance of “Mad Love,” a song from the group’s eponymously named album about the raw and tender moments the group’s members have encountered in the last couple of years: setting down roots, creating families, and finding home, but co-lead vocalists Jess Wolfe and Holly Laesing stuck around to answer our burning...

We’re smack between ACL weekends, rolling out all kinds of nifty gifties for you from social media content to amazing performance photos to videos and free downloads of our backstage performances. Today, we take a look back at one of our favorites with an artist you can see live next week. Austin’s Luna Luna is the solo project of Kavvi, a Colombian-American artist seamlessly blending his Spanish and English roots for an infectious blend of nostalgia-tinted Latin soul with a modern indie-pop flair. The former KUTX Artist of the Month performs at 3Ten at ACL Live next Thur...

For the last five years, UK duo the Heavy Heavy have been dancing through our airwaves with their retro-inspired brand of indie rock, injecting modern hooks and riffs with harmonies that sound positively Woodstock. We played several songs from the duo’s 2024 album One of A Kind, and they stopped backstage at ACL Fest to hang with us and perform a stripped-down version of “Happiness,” one that landed on our Favorite Songs of 2024 list, that will have you asking if this was recorded at a festival in Austin today or Newport a few decades ago.

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A.G. Schiano is Clover County, an Athens, Georgia-based project that was largely chiseled and polished on the road while touring with acts like Lord Huron and Shakey Graves. Going through your twenties is like encountering constant change with a seemingly endless number of metamorphoses as you really cement who you are and what you’re all about. The result here is her debut album Finer Things, a sonic coming-of-age scrapbook brimming with reflection, love, and a collection of notions and mementos.

Schiano brought Clover County’s blend of classic country, indie pop, and Americana (which she’s clev...

Band plays SXSW, the right person catches their set, and the big ball starts rolling. And while that treasured dream has largely been lost to obscurity, merely existing in the whispered annals of Live Music Capitol lore, Austin’s the Animeros are smack in the throes of living it. Their blend of Colombian, Mexican, and West Texas influences weaves a sonic tapestry blending boleros, psychedelia, and cumbia. Their SXSW set last year put them in the crosshairs of one Dan Auerbach, who produced the group’s debut single “Gózalo” that came out in August. A cover of “Gózalo Mulata”...

It’s Friday, I think five planets are still in retrograde, so let’s all take a breath and let out a big ol’ “GOT DANG!” And now let’s get to the real danged thing. Stacey McCann leads the Austin blues-funk group SOB & the Dangs (and the SOB is for StaceOnBass thank you very much!). McCann’s voice was made for the blues, full of raw emotion belting from a place of a life lived. They’ve got a new EP on the way, and today we’re thrilled to share “I Don’t Mind,” a tune that takes a break from the b...

For ten years, London’s Warmduscher have been tantalizing audiences with their raucous brand of post-punk, weaving throbbing guitar melodies with elaborate stories about ridiculous run-ins with characters of all stripes. It’s like getting a dive bar soundtrack to the best stories you’ve heard from your favorite regular. Despite ten years and five albums under their belt, the quintet has never lost its dirty debonair attitude, and that was manifested for our Studio 1A audience last Thursday ahead of their Levitation show at 13th Floor that night. Even better, they blessed us with this classic from 2019’s Tainted...

Kelly Willis has been a stalwart of Austin’s country and Americana scene for decades, so it’s no surprise to find her on Grey DeLisle’s new project: IT’S ALL HER FAULT: A TRIBUTE TO CINDY WALKER. For the compilation, Willis chose the 1955 tune “I Don’t Care,” written by Walker and Webb Pierce, that spent 12 weeks at the top of the Country and Western charts and later became a hit again for Ricky Skaggs in 1982, the first version of the song Willis heard. Inspired by Willis’s personal memory of performing the song with her husband and brother-in-l...

Despite the name, Austin’s the Lonesome Heroes have been releasing music and playing shows for a whopping 21 years. To mark the occasion, they’re gifting their audience with a bit of their live faire with Live & Lonesome at the Purple Bee, a collection of songs recorded at the hybrid recording studio and live concert streaming venue Purple Bee Studios, located in Volente, TX.

In this live recording, 21 years of songwriting together and cohesion on stage are front and center with country blues strings dancing through a bed that two-steps between Americana and a crescendo building to a bi...

It’s been a minute since we checked-in with Austin surf-psych outfit Annabelle Chairlegs. And honestly, “Candy Apple Red,” is still living in my head rent-free five years later. Now the group (fronted by Lindsay Mackin) is back after a three-year hiatus, and what better way to come back than with an album produced by Ty Segall?

“Ice Cream on the Beach” flaunts a poppier side to Mackin. Like a throwback to Caroline Rose’s Loner era, there’s a subtle edge cutting through the sun-kissed, lofty synths and Mackin’s mesmerizing vocals. Newly signed to Austin’s TODO records, th...

Beyond being a musician, S.G. Goodman is an educator. Truly, how many of us knew about the old Appalachian tradition of planting by the moon? Using moon phases and their gravitational pull to determine what crops to plant when (beans, peas, and eggplant during the second quarter, if you were wondering).

But the moon’s power has also been tied to births and “otherwise unexplainable circumstances and actions.” Even more fitting that the Kentucky-born country-flecked indie rocker has tied this all together in her new album Planting By the Signs. An album about love, loss, reconciliation, and al...

“There ain’t no honky tonks in Philadelphia,” laments Jessica Pyrdsa AKA Datura. The latest single from the Lockhart-based artist’s upcoming album, Saint Cecilia, takes a pivot from her piano-driven, jazz-meets-art-pop sound for this equally cinematic, blues-leaden country hall slow dance that feels like a waltz in all but time signature.

Here, her skills as a composer are on full display, as her own vocals play like an off-stage narrator, letting woebegone, country-blues strings dance around the dusty floor behind heavy crimson curtains, reeling in homesickness and reveling in the memory of times spent in those old, sti...

Austin native Elijah Delgado has been releasing his self-proclaimed indie rock lullabies since 2021. In that time, he’s performed with national acts like Sister Hazel and Dayglow and has appeared at Old Settler’s Music Fest and Utopiafest. And today, he’s got a HAAM Day set for your downtime lunchtime listening.

“Hide + Seek” showcases Delgado’s continued progression in songwriting. While there’s no lullaby here, there’s still that cozy, bedroom indie heart, backed with country rock chords and a dusty vibe to give it a great Texas patina. A song about being honest with yourself when you...

Austin’s Parker Woodland are back with potentially their rawest song yet, and certainly my favorite one to date. Standing firmly in their vintage pop-punk sound comes “Get Me to the Show,” a punchy tune packed with earwormy hooks and raw, female-led energy fueled by Erin Walters’s signature vocals pivoting between pop harmonies and Sleater-Kinney-like attitude .

Akin to the Waitresses doing the theme song to Square Pegs, this song sounds like a cool band decided to write a TV sitcom theme about a budding, cool girl music nerd. She doesn’t want to be in the band; she...

It’s Weird Wednesday, and I aim to keep it that way. And what better to stay on theme than to revisit a recent favorite of mine from Studio 1A?

Tear Dungeon is truly to be seen. Between the uniform of all-white street clothes paired with leather gimp masks and the perpetual question, “what will hit me first? The music or the blood?” the magnitude and spectacle of the group speaks for itself. It’s just an added bonus that their thrash-punk sound hits just as hard.

Tear Dungeon stopped by Studio 1A to initiate our audi...

All musical motifs of the Lone Star State converge in Austin’s West Texas Exiles. The quartet, made up of members hailing from El Paso, Amarillo, and Lubbock, draws inspiration from all squares of the Texas music quilt, from Willie to Buddy and everyone in between.

Their debut full-length album 8000 Days came out last Friday, and it’s already made an impression on the Americana album and singles charts. From the album is “Division,” a song that on its head is about marital woes, splitting-up your things once it’s finally over, and the raw bouquet of feelings t...

Jacksonville, Florida’s Yuno is DIY-defined. The self-taught musician and producer has been fine-tuning his brand of indie-pop mixed with reggae, hip-hop and skate culture influences to boot for some time, and that perfect mix of luck and talent caught the eye of Shabazz Palace member and Sub Pop rep Ishmael Butler, and the rest is, quite literally, Sub Pop history.

Yuno’s debut album Blest takes his DIY vision to full realization, elevating his flair for the dramatic with cinematic arrangements to match his sharp songwriting. Yuno stopped by Studio 1A last week to “Blest” us with his...

After several amuse-bouches of singles, Austin’s Lola Tried are ready to let us feast. OG members Lauren Burton and Ray Garza are joined by newcomers Gianni Sarmiento and Austin Norman for the group’s third EP, out this Friday.

Perfect for your workout (or rageout) playlist is “Hot Shot Barbie.” She’s got her foot on the gas, turbo engaged, and the only thing that can stop her? Life has yet to answer that question. But she’s got that Robert Baratheon energy, and she’s yet to find her boar. Once again, Lola Tried presents a master class...

As the not-so-great Kyle Cooke once said, “Summer should be fun.” And to remind you that summer doesn’t end until September 22nd is the latest single from Brooklyn’s Noods. The ironically fully-clothed quartet returns with their sophomore album I Never Dream About You next month, and today they release its debut single “Slip Up.”

True to the group’s playful nature and affinity for muted pastels, this sunny-with-an-attitude indie rock tune represents the album’s lucid dream state, blurring the lines of dreams and reality to explore whether who we want to be is living-up to how we’re liv...

No longer in her ingenue phase, Mexico’s Silvana Estrada has maintained her wunderkind rise. With her birdsong voice and her signature Venezuelan cuatro guitar as a vessel to carry her stories of love, grief, and growth.

Ahead of her newly announced international tour and album, Vendrán Suaves Lluvias, out in October, Estrada’s released “Dime,” a deceptively lovely song about post-breakup wild rage, that point where you only feel like your time was wasted, and everything was a lie. Was it really? Who cares? We’re mad now.

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Well howdy! Happy Labor Day! The weather may or may not be participating in our final romp of summertime, but Austin’s Grackles are here to make the day sunny despite Mother Nature.

What began as a side project made up of touring and studio musicians for A-list artists such as the Chicks and Paul Simon and a GRAMMY winner has now produced two albums of sawdust hall bangers to keep your dirt kickers moving. From their sophomore album Grackles Deux: The Grackling, the plague gives us “There Will Be Time,” a twangy, kinetic, fiddle-led romp to get yo...

At this point, Adrian Quesada is a man who needs no introduction. With a musical curiosity rivaling Beck, project to project, he conjures up albums thoughtfully marrying tradition or inspiration to Quesada.

On both iterations of the Boleros Psicodélicos albums, Quesada explores the centuries-old, Cuban-rooted tradition of the Bolero, beautiful, dramatic love songs deep with passion and steeped with stories of love unrequited, forsaken, and everlasting. As part of his latest Studio 1A performance, he brought in a fellow Grammy winner: the renowned Puerto Rican bolero songstress iLe to perform “Bravo,” a beautiful piece to the ear...

Song of the Day has returned from vacation, and I can’t think of a better way to come back than with my favorite dance-pop group this city has to offer. We’ve been following the rise of Jane Leo since its origins, and since the last time we checked in with the duo, they supported indie group Cannons on what was Jane Leo’s first national tour; played a ton of music fests; and their single “Wow” landed in ads for both Google Pixel and Michael Kors.

Over the last year or so, they’ve breadcrumbed a few banger...

Team Trust call themselves art rock, which is somewhat fitting, but if we want to be specific, I’d call them quirk-punk. The Austin trio sounds a bit like Being Dead and your cool, Gen-X brother’s punk demos he recorded at home the summer before they wound-up on tour with Black Flag, opting for a rotisserie of raucous harmony, melting breakdowns, and swaths of minimal instrumentation with syncopated lyrics that sound like they were recorded in a tin can. It’s excellence in weird.

Team Trust releases “Wuggis” today ahead of their debut album Treat Box out later...

Austin’s Russell Taine, Jr. blends indie rock with an Austin and Texas twist. It’s indie music powered by chords and melodies that you imagine being played at dusk in your cool friend’s backyard with a chain link fence and an oak tree in the background. It sounds like Hole In the Wall.

Their latest single “Sidewinder” is both a perfect metaphor for that illustration and a perfect lead-in to their upcoming Ghosts EP. Like the album, “Sidewinder” is about disconnect and things slipping away…or side-slithering away. Lamenting the loss of the “Piscies Queen,” we’re right alongsid...

Andrew Chasen. With the Disciples of Creation, he takes you to church. With A Giant Dog, he takes you church. Sweet Spirit makes you want to dance the night away, and Tear Dungeon drags you to the basement, ties you to the St. Andrew’s Cross, and says flogging and bastinado are for the faint of heart. But that’s what you paid for, isn’ it? You even pre-selected “emerald green silk” on the rope menu.

Tear Dungeon is truly to be seen. Between the uniform of all-white street clothes paired with leather gimp masks and the perpetual...

Jack Greenwood’s new single is dance music for sad lads. On “Four Walls,” a song about feeling trapped, the Austin-by-way-of-Wisconsin singer and producer presents a fantastical escape, evoking the moodier side of the 80s synth. The opposing dichotomy works well here; what begins with sunny textures and a fun, melodic bass spirals into a manic descent right alongside Greenwood’s lyrics. But the spiraling is still a groove machine, taking the mania to its brink before its dizzying, synthy fizzling out. Yes, it will have you dancing with tears in your eyes.

Jack Greenwood performs with Clarence...

Bay Area singer-songwriter Mae Powell‘s debut album on Karma Chief Records, Making Room for the Light, serves up a West-coast brand of vintage, pastel-colored, jazz-meets-indie-pop beauty akin to Atlanta’s Faye Webster. Her latest single “Contact High” has origins in conversations with Powell’s elderly neighbor about a song with the spirit of being high socially, but not outrightly about weed. A soundtrack to the get-together. Jazzy, groovy, and effortless, Powell does this faithfully, taking a step back in time to the days of sunken living rooms and flitting about in kaftans while you sip from that new exotic tik...

Despite having a name that sounds like it belongs to a member of the Cramps, Austin’s Celestine Gravely‘s brand of rock is more attuned to the likes of Patti Smith and PJ Harvey, balancing the sounds of those eras and the power of their vocals with her own stamp of songwriting. You’ve got it all here: raw vocals that go from lilt to loaded, powerful guitar riffs, and lots of fun tempo changes to keep you on your toes.

“Kill the Heather” pulls together all of Gravely’s inspirations, employing lots of starts and stops, mood...

Austin’s Allyse crafts R&B-infused pop charms to pair with her sometimes self-empowered and sometimes vulnerable songwriting. The military brat fuses all of the cultural touchstones experienced throughout her childhood, her most sensitive song to date. “Lesson” is about just that, specifically lessons around relationships. How to not hurt others, how to be strong when you’re hurt, and more specifically, how to handle it when you’re spiraling and, in her words, wondering if you’re inadvertently going to wind up being someone else’s cautionary tale. Despite the song’s weight, Allyse deftly stays true to her “every song...