SXSW 2012

superhumanoids makes dreamy pop that shouts summery '60s harmonies, garage rock's raw tonality, slick new-wave electronics, and the adventurous dissonance of '90s indie rock. LA-based, the foursome is equally focused on propulsive live performances and glimmery productions for private listening.

Princeton is a minimalist pop band from Los Angeles, California. They are releasing their 2nd full length album, 'Remembrance of Things To Come' on Hit City USA and Easter Everywhere Records on February 21. After the release of their debut album on Kanine Records, they toured with Sleigh Bells, Phoenix, Camera Obscura, White Rabbits, CSS, Ra Ra Riot, among others. And are set to tour around SXSW in support of the new record.

Music history is rich with rock bands fronted by dynamic duos. Looking to carry on this yin and yang tradition are singer Emily Armstrong and female guitarist Siouxsie Medley, who front Los Angeles’ Dead Sara — an electrifying four-piece rock band whose supercharged music is propelled by Medley’s exhilarating, monster guitar riffs and Armstrong’s powerful, wailing vocals. Dead Sara also includes bassist Chris Null and drummer Sean Friday, who funnel the ferocious spectacle of the band’s high-energy live performance into their self-titled debut album. The debut will be released on the band’s own label, Pocket Kid Records through Fontana Universal.

TEARIST is a movement.

Winnipeg Manitoba is equal parts an arts town and a party town. Tim "Co-op" Hoover is a dj, producer, promoter, and entertainer whose work has both a sense of humour and a sense of wonder. For over a decade, he has been the driving force behind the city's best dance parties and has toured the world, both solo and in collaboration with other DJs and hip-hop artists. His recordings have progressed from all-vinyl DJ collages, to clever remixes and mashups, to thoughtful, densely layered instrumental pieces. The common thread remains Hoover's love of music, and desire to share it with others.

Hailing from Winnipeg and Montreal, Chic Gamine’s wall-of-sound harmonies and hip-shaking beats could be straight out of Motown, before you throw in the curveball of French pop and four rotating lead-singers. By all the laws of the music business, this group is like the unicorn – it probably shouldn’t exist, yet, here it is - nostalgia-inspired but with a fresh new sound – a group that artfully hops from rhythm and blues, nouveau-pop to vintage soul – the mix is indescribable, but unbearably tasty. ‬

Les Jupes are a new band from the centre of Canada versed in expansive musical landscapes, sharp lyrics and an observer’s eye for the world. They are four Anglos with a French name making big, broad and determined music. And they are at the centre of a prairie renaissance growing around Head In The Sand Records.

"...sharp-dressed tracks marked by unique characters and a sense of tuneful theatricality.” - The Globe and Mail

Imaginary Cities was born in a Winnipeg club called The Cavern, in between sets. This new group, founded in a chance meeting, is fast becoming one of the world’s brightest new bands.
Their debut album, Temporary Resident, is being released across the globe on various labels (Hidden Pony, Grand Hotel Van Cleef, and Shock) this year.

Playing music with a sense of urgency and sophistication well beyond their years, it is tempting to place bets on just how far their remarkable talent will lead this band. In the autumn of 2009, Cole Woods and Alannah Walker formed Cannon Bros upon the premise that the less people you have in a band, the easier it is to get things done. While this utilitarian approach could easily limit a lesser group, Cannon Bros prove that less can certainly be more -- though merely made by one guitar, a set of drums, and two voices, these songs do not sound stripped down or bare, but full and vibrant. With ridiculously catchy melodies and great songs, the sky is most certainly the limit. Think Pavement meets Yo La Tengo or early Replacements meets an edgier, less religious version of the Carpenters. Look for their first full length album “Firecracker/Cloudglow” out on Disintegration Records.

All the listening and songwriting resulted in a unique alt.-Texas country/Texas pop sound laden with rock, soul and roots. At the heart of Moore’s songs are a groove and a melody. “Rather than being a singer-songwriter and writing words and then putting chords to them, I like to intrigue people first with a melody,” he says. “And then whatever emotion it evokes is what I sing about. It’s about the mood and the beat and tempo and vibe. I just rely on my ear. I try to take from everything I hear. I write my own rules.”

SAHARA SMITH – MYTH OF THE HEART

Sahara Smith is a natural. Or as the Austin Chronicle observes, “She's the real deal all
right.”

Don’t take our word for it. Listen to her debut album on Playing in Traffic Records, Myth
of the Heart, and you’re bound to agree with the Dallas Morning News that “Smith is a
revelation.” The disc is hailed as “a gorgeous album for all lovers of carefully chosen words,
rich imagery and ethereal vocals” by Texas Music magazine and “a richly impressive,
intensely soulful debut album,” by the Los Angeles Times. All that and more is to be
savored on Myth of the Heart.

It bows with the alluring “Thousand Secrets,” which opens a window on the vulnerable
places we all have, as Smith writes, “For every broken branch there is a mile of fallen
leaves/But no one knows the river flows a thousand miles deep.” Propulsive churning
tracks like “Are You Lonely,” “The Real Thing” and “All I Need” make feelings of
longing and desire palpable, while the up-tempo title song sings about resisting the urge to
love. Meditative yet kinetic auras grace Smith’s reflections on being lost within love (“Tin
Man Town”), empathy (“Angel”), mortality (“The World’s On Fire”) and life’s travails
(the closing cut “Twilight Red,” which Smith wrote at age 13). And such songs as “Train
Man,” “Midnight Plane” and “Mermaid” embody the notion of poetry in motion with their
evocative images of travel and places near and far.

THE DUNWELLS – BLIND SIGHTED FAITH

Michelle Armstrong is no stranger to making her compelling musical presence known throughout the U.S. In recent years Armstrong has drawn attention to her rousing blend of pop/rock and blues, whilst living in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Austin, Winston-Salem, and Savannah. Her versatile and gifted style of songwriting pays tribute to the musicians and cultures of these cities. At the early age of four she began developing the voice that now has the strength and rock-power to shake a house. Michelle is feverishly writing and recording her 2011 breakthrough Pop/Rock album, while performing and collaborating with the rock band, The Steps, (Sam Thompson, Alexander Lynch, Stephen Ross). She is happy to have found a new home with Playing in Traffic Records/Loophole Management.

Always striving for original, innovative melodies SPEAK garnered noteworthy attention with their 2010 debut EP, Hear Here and received overwhelming industry praise. Austin Chronicle asserted they are “poised to change the musical landscape” and gave the quartet 4 stars, the publication’s highest rating, while The A.V. Club declared it “smooth electronic seduction, spiked with a little venom.” Their powerhouse synth-rock-pop anthems and infectious melodies have earned them honors like “Best New Band” at Austin Music Awards where they were presented the award by the Talking Heads.
I Believe In Everything was produced by the sought-after Chris “Frenchie” Smith (JET, Dandy Warhols). The 11-song set features the smash hit “Carrie” which you can download at www.hearspeakhere.com. The song is also available for purchase at iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/carrie-single/id445168769.
SPEAK’s frontman, Troupe Gammage, has been recording music since age 11, and has always been entranced by the compositions within his favorite video games. Releasing his first EP at 16, he subsequently released two online albums and, to date, has received over 25,000 downloads. Thereafter, he began creating music on rudimentary computer software and later founded his own production company geared towards gaming for PlayStation, Xbox, Wii and PC.
Never losing his love of music, he was introduced to fellow bandmates Nick Hurt (guitar), Joey Delahoussaye (bass) and Jake Stewart (drums) through mutual friends in 2008 and soon after formed SPEAK

From Doug Freeman, The Austin Chronicle:

Barefoot and bare-armed, Whiskey Shivers' Bobby Fitzergerald is a howling, hell-bent, whiskey-soaked Texas hillbilly leading a rabid pack of string players. Whittling the fine-tuned talent of Old Crow Medicine Show with an unhinged flash of trucker speed, the young Austin quintet debuted with last year's Batholith, but it's the raucous and rowdy live set that makes it one of Austin's top new outfits.

Do you remember the moment in Jerry Macguire when he's driving down the highway singing "Free Fallin'"? I'm like Jerry, heroic and pathetic, one foot in manic, elated joy and the other in total, dismal depression.

Hi. My name is Nick Jaina.

Foxtails Brigade present an ornate kind of chamber pop, intricate violin and cello arrangements are anchored by Laura Weinbach’s intricately played classical guitar and pitch perfect vocals. But underneath the simple melodies lie an impeding darkness, a lyrical landscape populated by shadowy and bizarre characters, rife with hints of rot, aging, and death.
The Hollywood Hills-born daughter of a cult filmmaker and sister of offbeat stand-up comedian Brent Weinbach, Laura grew up in a musical household that embraced eccentricity. Her next-door neighbors were circus contortionists with emus and fang-toothed monkeys as pets and her childhood activities included snail hunting and spying on celebrity neighbors like Slash, Ice-T and Larry from Perfect Strangers. While her mother, an accomplished pianist, taught the children piano, her father had a more unique approach to musical education:

There’s a rare confidence to Emily Jane White’s songwriting: it’s at once generous and tough-minded, reflective and unsentimental. Her work shares some elements with folk music, but the term does not do justice to her ambitious songwriting and robust arrangements. White possesses a singular voice inspired by the raveled threads of the uncanny in American culture, including depression-era blues and classic works of gothic literature such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper.
White’s third album Ode to Sentience is her most realized work to date. Drawing upon finger-picked folk, traditional country, classical music and rock, White creates an expansive space for her intuitive lyrics and elegiac vocals. The spare skeletons of the songs on Ode to Sentience are fleshed out with subdued electric guitar thrums, diaphanous organ, ethereal pedal steel guitar, lush strings, and White’s dusky alto with its signature catch. Her indelible sound has earned White a devoted European following, prompting her to regularly tour France, Switzerland, Belgium, Poland, Austria and the Netherlands in recent years.
Ode to Sentience unifies White’s recurring themes and her fascination with Gothic America into an assured statement. There’s an emotional potency to the songs, betraying her keen eye for the power dynamics of interpersonal conflict, melancholy, and confinement. In “I Lay to Rest (California)”, a meditation upon isolation, oppression, and the redemption of grace, White imbues the potentially morbid statement “You were a body, you were a ghost, now you are nothing, the dark it up and rose, and toward the light it took you, and melted your wings, you were a body and now you are nothing” with the optimistic recitation, “there must be a way out.” White doesn’t wallow in darkness and morbidity; instead she considers her work to be unifying, an empathetic reflection on the universality of adversity. She sings of individuals “dwelling within oppressive circumstances while seeking liberation despite their isolation and silent suffering.”
This sensibility betrays White’s provenance. Raised in Fort Bragg, California, a seaside town nestled in the misty, secluded woodland of the Mendocino Coast, it could be said that optimistic melancholy and isolation don’t only suffuse White’s songwriting, but are in her bones. While attending the University of California, Santa Cruz, White researched gender studies and nurtured an acute social conscience. Her passion for social justice informs her songwriting, evidenced by her previous releases Dark Undercoat, which garnered raves from the likes of Spin and Rolling Stone, and Victorian America, which contended with the state of New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina. Ode to Sentience is equally engaged as White’s previous works, but delves deeper into the fundamental dynamics of injustice, achieving a sympathetic and universal investigation of the personal as political.
Despite such thoughtful concerns, White embraces songwriting’s intuitive logic. “I strive to create scenes in my writing that allow for abstract rather than literal interpretation,” she says, giving listeners space for “interpretation and discovery.” While there is rich subtext to her work, in execution it is effortless and transporting. As she demonstrates on Ode to Sentience, “a simple melody with words can be impressionistic and suggestive.”

In 2009 Cameron Spies caught Lizzy Ellison becoming transfixed by the fluid movement of a bank teller's hands-- a involuntary hypnotic condition that Spies oddly enough shared. The Hands That Take You, the title of the debut album from the pair's dreamy-pop outfit Radiation City, is an homage to this phenomenon as it was the catalyst for not only a long-term love affair but a wellspring of creativity. The subsequent years came to be the most influential time in both their lives. Together they founded a DIY cassette tape label, planted a thriving vegetable garden in the backyard of their Portland, Oregon home and formed Radiation City, which, after only a few live performances was already being lauded as part of "a new generation of acts that don’t care much for the longstanding walls between slow acoustic pop, dance music, experimental electronic music and distortion-fueled rock (Willamette Week)"

With their new album, Court the Storm, Portland OR's Y La Bamba return with a haunting second full-length of delicately crafted art folk. "The voice is most effective when it's indistinguishable from the emotion of the lyric as well as the drama of the rhythm and chords" says NPR's Felix Contreras when discussing Y La Bamba's stunning front-woman, adding "...Luz Elena Mendoza stands very near the front of this pack." On Court the Storm, these ethereal vocals combine with bittersweet melodies and thrumming Latin-inspired rhythms to form an indie pop masterpiece.

From Kate X Messer, The Austin Chronicle:

Back in the storied Sixties, you couldn't get more dark/light dichotomous than the Velvet Underground vs. the Mamas & the Papas. Cigarette alto (with a pitch-perfect squeak) Natalie Ribbons could tackle Nico and Mama Cass, and drummer Lauren Hess definitely Moe Tuckers that thump. Perhaps the perfect gray area would be the twisted entropy of the Kennedy-Bouvier kin of Grey Gardens, which Agent Ribbons coincidentally has a song about.