Music Blog

A veritable orgy of independent film and music, in addition to serving as a state of the medium conference for industry types, the annual SXSW Festival is now in its 22nd year. Quincy Jones delivers the keynote address during the music portion of this year's conference, the festival end of which also features performances by the likes of PJ Harvey & John Parish, The Meat Puppets, Devo, and The Decemberists, who are revealing their new Hazards of Love from start to finish with a performance on opening night.

The full showcase schedule with venues and set times was just revealed today, so if you're going it's time to start figuring out how you can simultaneously be four different places in Austin at once. If you're not, there's still a motherlode of free mp3s for you to download, and the magical feeling that can only come from falling in love with a band you've never heard of before based on a mid-range bitrate digital file. Happens to me every year. Find it all here.

And a few to get you started:

MP3: Winterpills- "Beesting"
MP3: The Cloud Room- "24 Hr Heartbreak"
MP3: Rademacher- "Believer"
MP3: Red Cortez- "World at Rest"
MP3: Viva Voce- "Drown Them Out"
MP3: Miniature Tigers- "Cannibal Queen"

(And that's just a teeny, tiny sampling of night #1).

Tagged: mp3, SXSW 2009