White Shoes & the Couples Company are rumored to be coming in from Indonesia (via) for SXSW 2008. The band, formed in 2002, is inspired by Indonesian films of the '70s and retro disco beats, as well as classic '30s jazz. They recently signed to Minty Fresh, and we predict 2008 as their break-out year, provided they roll into town with a couple of good shows booked....

Between the strangeness of their music and their position as a brother-sister act du jour, The Fiery Furnaces are a band that’s easy to hate. They bludgeon their listeners with unapproachable albums featuring their grandmother’s talk-singing, backwards lyrics, and a willingness to shift gears in a song at the very moment an enjoyable melody becomes recognizable. On top of this, Eleanor Friedberger’s limited vocal range and Matthew Friedberger’s penchant for corniness have a tendency to......

Moth!Fight! are a band who have had a much longer gestation period than most of their peers, a time in which one can assume songwriter and “conductor” Kevin Adickes painstakingly perfecting both the rumpled antique aesthetics that dominate his band’s look, performances and sound – the latter of which calls to mind both the inspired trippy noise-pop of The Olivia Tremor Control, but which also speaks in the lexicon of the band’s clear, more current......

When Animal Collective played in Austin last, it was at the start of our sticky, wet summer, and the band mesmerized their crowd at Antone’s with a remarkable set featuring quite a few tracks from the then-unreleased Strawberry Jam and even some post-Strawberry Jam jams as well. Now, at the advent of fall (or what we Texans call fall), the Collective returned to Emo’s, and fans of the New York-based group were more than ready......

Shout Out Louds Our Ill Wills (Merge) 2005's Howl Howl, Gaff Gaff produced a moderate buzz for the Stockholm-based Shout Out Louds, dropping a snappier, poppier version of garage rock on our tightly belted laps. The record, equal parts Johnny Marr and Rivers Cuomo, pondered the woes of hipster heartbreak, dumb-luck sadness and singer Adam Olenius' distinctive croon simply oozed with longing and hope. That being said, Howl Howl is not at all a......

The video for Spoon's "The Ghost of You Lingers" is floating around (even if it's probably unofficial) now, have a look: It's a blue, bleeding piano, y'all. Incidentally, we found it amusing to watch this guy read his poetry in one tab while the Spoon song plays in another ... be sure to start them at the same time, it's a sort of Wizard of Oz / The Wall accident that worked out smashingly well.......

Connoisseurs of fearless experimentalism should be happy about the existence (and subsequent popularity) of Animal Collective. The New York headquartered quartet have been around since 2000, making their strange and wonderful music over the course of eight albums, the last two of which have made them indie-household names. While members are prolific in their own right, with member Noah Lennox's recent Panda Bear offering Person Pitch sure to grace the top of the best......

There's really no way to talk about just one of the bands that's playing tonight at Emo's. Though not widely praised in Austin's rock-loving community, we think they're wonderful, each with its own fanciful and individual personality. Come early. Be loud. Stay late. Avoid the bathroom. Headlining the show are locals The Boxing Lesson, whose lo-fi and indie sounds "deserve more of a following" says The Chron. Also, you'll get another chance to see Tussle,......

Modest Mouse – We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank From the opening moments of WWDBTSES—god, even the acronym’s a mouthful—it's apparent that Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock has become a capital-R Rock Star, perhaps the oddest one since David Byrne: track one, “March Into The Sea,” finds the newly-svelte songwriter frothing and howling from word one. The man hasn't lost his knack for colorful illustrations of human nature, tossing off wry observations like......

Andrew Bird Armchair Apocrypha (Fat Possum) In a strange small way, Bird's violin and trademark whistle takes a backseat (driver) position on Armchair Apocrypha, allowing more emphatic drumming and leading guitars to rise to the occasion. The album is undoubtedly Bird, showcasing songs about mountains of handkerchiefs and Scythian empires, violin picking and soaring harmonies supporting his soothing croon as expected. "Imitosis" finds his songwriting taking a slight turn in a darker direction, while......

Have you checked out Single Frame's "John Carpenter Halloween Remix" yet? Head over to their site, dig around 'till you find their mp3s, and grab it - then play it loudly for your friend's children. Here's what else is worth mentioning this week in the way of new releases: A Cloud Mireya Singular (Eastern Developments) Though half of A Cloud Mireya is Scott Herren, the mastermind behind Prefuse 73 and Piano Overlord, fans of......

Ever sniff the inside of Weezer's Pinkerton? Wait, hear us out. Its monochromatic liner notes were printed on a kind of matte, somewhat grainy paper, and happened to possess a pungent, fantastic smell. Don't look at us like you've never sniffed a record before. It's the music fan's equivalent of picking out a wedgie: inevitable, personal, and done when others aren't looking. Upon cracking open the Ace Fu Annuals debut offering, Be He Me,......

GoogTube! GoogTube! GoogTube! Here's what's new at the record store: Annuals Be He Me (Ace Fu) Because of (or in despite of) their popularity with the blogging set, Annuals' highly anticipated album, Be He Me, is sure to be a hit this week. For fans of Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, and yes, even Animal Collective, Annuals add a bit of punch to the whole "we're pretending to be lo-fi but really we spent......

Folk music has become a term used fairly loosely in the independent music scene, partially because there are incredible artists making music that reflects the genre's origins, and partially because there's really no other way to describe the sound. Psychedelic folk ("freak folk", if you're nasty), however, sounds like something you make up when you've perhaps tied a few too many on and find yourself toying with the idea of cross-genre experimentation with instruments like a cigarette machine, or a vacuum. Yet, artists like Devendra Banhart, Animal Collective, Joanna Newsom, Espers, and DeVotchKa create music that beckons the memory of Donovan and T.Rex, giving shape to the term as we use it today. ...

After 18 bands in a weekend, Austinist is exhausted. Coachella 2006 was everything we thought it would be, only hotter, and with less alcohol (due to the scorching heat) and more drugs (since nobody could drink near the stages). We went in with no set agenda in terms of seeing particular bands - it seemed smarter to just hit whatever struck us right at the time. This strategy worked pretty well, and here's how......

Austin City Limits is pretty nifty, we'll admit. But let's face it: the lineup for Coachella, ACL's glammed-up West Coast sibling in the desiccated wastelands near Joshua Tree, has all but reigned supreme these last few years. And this year, they're at it again; earlier this week they announced the full roster for the two-day festival, to be headlined this year by Depeche Mode (huzzah!) and ... Tool (huh?). The entire lineup: Saturday, April......

The Austin Center for FEMA Disaster Relief closed yesterday The New Pantheon shortlist nominees have been announced, and they are: Animal Collective, Antony and the Johnsons, Fiona Apple, Arcade Fire, Bloc Party, Death Cab for Cutie, The Decemberists, Kings of Leon, M.I.A., and Sufjan Stevens So there's evidently a species of rare African clawed frogs that, when injected with urine from a pregnant woman, will ovulate. There's also a story about how they're dying......

SXSW.com released an updated lineup for this year's SXSW Music Festival earlier today, and it's one hell of a list. The SXSW committee hastens to note that "This is a partial list of performers confirmed to appear at the 2006 SXSW Music Festival. This list is current as of 1/13/06. All of this information is subject to change." International acts include: Masahiro Nitta, DMBQ, Ellegarden, Tsu Shi Ma Mi Re, PE'Z, The Emeralds (Japan)......

Waterloo Records, one of our finest independently-owned, nationally-renowned music stores, has been nominated for a prestigious PLUG Independent Music Award, along with Austin festivals SXSW and ACL. Sponsored by URB, Spin, Insound and Evolvs Media, the annual nominees are selected by a group of "writers, DJs, webmasters, bloggers, artists, filmmakers, managers, indie retailers, and most importantly, fans." Now that the lists have been narrowed down to a lucky few in categories such as the......