Don’t expect any posts until monday as I will be with two other vegetarians in Austin, Texas for the 21st annual South by Southwest music festival.

SXSW Baby! – Familiarize yourself with downtown Austin

sxsw 2007 player. streaming songs from all the bands. why wasn’t i listening to this last week? damn.

Yaris SXSW | MP3s. Go grab the first song listed “Down in the Valley” by The Broken West. it is very good pop.

Yaris SXSW | yrItinerary. handy sxsw showlist + google map.

south by southwest music torrent “Here’s the 1st torrent of 2007 showcasing band mp3s including 739 mp3s.” it’s 3.1Gigs in size

south by southwest music lineup. have i mentioned that i’m going to sxsw this year? well, i am.

pony up. montreal band i just heard on the cbc radio 3 sxsw podcast. power-pop-rock-esque. it’s a terrible myspace link, but you can download one of the tunes.

tapesntapes. seems these guys kicked up a bit of a fuss at sxsw. i’m terrible at describing bands that sound like this but my brutal attempt will be “kinda like the pixies meets clap your hands with more reverb”. of the mp3s on the link, i enjoyed beach girls and insistor quite a bit. seems they’ll be at the sunset tavern in seattle this saturday (a shame i’ll be at belle & sebastion & the new & pornographers).

voxtrot
As South by SouthWest kicks into high gear for the 20th time, I find myself looking over an utterly recockulous listing of bands who are playing and wondering “what the fuck am i doing not in austin?”

Also, oddly enough, I came across a band from Austin tonight called Voxtrot and they are definitely worth pointing out. Their sound is three parts belle&sebastian pop sensibility, one part humbled vocals irking to bust out. Either way, it’s catchy stuff. Now, I dispise the neo-geocities monstrosity that is myspace but it does redeem itself with the pile of new music it has to sample. This includes four track by voxtrot, but since you can’t download them I’ve taken it upon myself to post my by-a-mile favorite of the pack…

voxtrot – the start of something MP3

shearwater
And since sxsw is all about lots of bands, I may as well through in another for good measure. Turns out voxtrot is playing with another austin-based band called Shearwater who have managed to describe themselves as indie experimental folk. And as stupid as that sounds, it pretty accurate and is surely better than anything my lazy ass would have come up with. Kind of a “what would happen if bowie didn’t think he was a member of Arcade Fire but instead the leader of Sufjan Steven’s band”-sound. I think my main concern with this band is that I’ll probably forever call them “uhhh, it’s something like Stillwater”. None the less, they too have a god-foresaken myspace which is even more redeemed than the last since it has no gaudy modifications and you can download all their sample mp3s. But just incase you want to skip the entire myspace experience and get the best of the four tracks, here ya go…

shearwater – whipping boy MP3 [seems you can't out link to myspace]