Mike Booher looks like a rock star until he smiles. Tall and lanky, shaggy black hair, smoking a cigarette outside his practice room, he is a throwback to the Ramones. Then he grins, waves, and he’s the friendly guy everyone loves. Who just happens to be the front man for Austin’s much-hyped Zykos. Originally from Houston, Booher grew up on the same street as bassist Mike Roeder and keyboardist Catherine Davis, a petit blonde piano......

Damien Jurado has called his 2005 album, On My Way To Absence, a “tribute to jealousy.” That may sound like a typical take from a tortured singer-songwriting sifting his way through love and morality, but Jurado’s dark lyrics and melancholy, haunting voice coalesce to create truly captivating music. He is the product of an indie darling background, living in Seattle, working first with Sub Pop and now Secretly Canadian, and collaborating with the likes of......

You know, one would think it’s easy to be coming to SxSW from Brooklyn to little ol’ Austin, with about five years of tour-cred, college radio on your collective dicks, and some influential Industry Brits thinking you’re the shit. But then again, there’s probably like, four hundred other bands with the same paperwork, stats, and haircuts, who are also in town. That formula is no novelty. But We Are Scientists caught our eye, or ear,......

Back when we lived up in Nueva York, we kept hearing about these crazy “Gypsy-Punk” assholes who appeared out of nowhere, presumably from the general vicinity of The Ukraine. Their shows were rumored to be complete sweat-fests of insane, mobish crowds that moved to the circus-like music with a singular, beast-like quality. Their singer, reputed to have some Brian Jones sort of charm over the masses, moved from song to song in a live show,......

Scott Biram is like Tom Waits in a meshback with lots of side-story between songs and a gruff whisky slur. Hold up. That’s really just Tom Waits in a meshback. Except Tom Waits never got hit head-on by an 18-wheeler at highway speed. Biram’s an Austin native who goes solo on the stage, where he spins grim yarns of lost lust/love, fumbling with the evils of humanity, and chasing the desire to do whatever the......

Hello Forward Russia! [Forgive us for not doing the Spanish exclamations on that one, even though it's part of their shtick, but we don’t know the “special keys” for that, so okay then.] Coming straight out of Leeds and kicking ass since 2004, this quatro has a reputation for stirring the shit and getting the monkeys to stop holding up the wall. We're going to take the lame route and just start naming other bands......

What makes a band like The Owls such a great experience is that their floating lyrics and haunting harmonies combine so wonderfully to set such a mood as to make dandelions spawn in springtime air, and cause bunny rabbits’ tails to wiggle so… We can’t write that kind of crap and expect it to hold water. The fact is that this band makes songs of rare beauty. They give us hope that there are people......

We are not profiling Healthy White Baby because they have a name that would shock moms everywhere, but you’ve got to admit it’s pretty catchy (a reference to Raising Arizona, so relax) . And it’s not because they’re from Chicago, but that definitely makes them amazingly cool. Our friend that runs a rock magazine has been expounding on Healthy White Baby’s genius for quite some time now. We finally got around to listening to them......

One of our favorite parts of SXSW Music last year was only tangentially related to the thousand-plus bands in town -- it was Flatstock 6, a three-day gigposter show over at the Austin Convention Center that featured some of the world's most talented screen printers (we snagged a limited-edition print of the cover of Michael Chabon's The Final Solution, as well as some classic Flaming Lips show posters). And this South by, they're coming......

A few weeks ago, local bands and filmmakers were asked to submit their music videos for consideration in this year's inaugural Texas Indie Music Video Festival. Tonight the selected works are being shown at the Drafthouse Downtown, brought to us by End of an Ear and Emo's. The list of chosen videos includes some of our favorite regional acts, including now-defunct Canoe, Peter & the Wolf, and Okkervil River. Check the full listing after......