It’s January! You know what this means? SXSW is excruciatingly close. This also means a lot of new bands being announced. Today marks the third round of bands that are announced and obviously there are a lot of bands to sift through. This year, I’ve decided to take a more international approach when looking at this current group of bands. Blame it on the Olympics.
HyunA (Korea)
Hyuna is a 21 year old South Korean pop star. She describes her music as “performance orientated music”. What does that mean? I don’t know. You might have seen her in Psy’s Gangnam Style video. Her is her own video It’s almost nsfw:
It’s some sort of hip hop music, I guess, and some of it is in English and has that Gwen Stefani-Holla Back girl vibe. I can guarantee you wherever she is playing, it will be a completely shitshow and that bar will contain basically every Korean in Texas. In other words, a hell of a good time.
HolySexyBastards (Venezuela)
This Venezuelan rock band sounds like Crispian Mills fronting the Black Keys. It’s actually pretty good in a dirty, dirty way.
Imarhan (Mali)
This is a group from Mali or Algeria, so you can bet Damon Albarn has already made friends with them. They have made quite a long trek over, so it might be worthwhile to see them.
La Canalla (Spain)
A band based out of Sevila, which just happens to be one of my favorite cities in Spain. The food there is fantastica and it is absolutely gorgeous. This group combines jazz, cabaret and Andalusian folk music. Basically, if you are at this showcase in Austin, you can close your eyes and pretend you are in Spain. Not a bad experience if you ask me.
Natig Rhythm Group (AZERBAIJAN)
From the country Azerbaijan, comes this poly rhythmic group. How can you resist a band that has this on their page:
Words to live by indeed.
These few bands just highlight the sheer amount of diversity at SXSW. It’s not all just hipster Brooklyn bands or basement nerds with laptops. So I highly encourage you to go check out the lineup and find something truly interesting.
Round three list here
