In such a loud town, Matt Oliver of TV Torso and proprietor of the studio Big Orange has been awfully quiet about doing work with Daytrotter, the studio from Rock Island, Illinois that created the now-famous "Daytrotter Sessions." more ›

You have many options this New Year's eve, and we'd be thrilled if you wanted to come celebrate with us, The Chronicle, Austin Town Hall, etc. at Cheer Up Charlies to roll in 2012. At a scant $5, your admission gets you into the venue and free champagne, along with eight bands and a DJ. Kicking off around eight, bands including Marmalakes and TV Torso will take turns on stage before Ringo Deathstarr starts the new year off right with blazing cuts from their latest album Colour Trip, etc. The schedule for all three stages after the jump. more ›

By now, indie rock quartet TV Torso are veterans of the local music scene. A couple of years after Sound Team's bubble burst, guitarist/vocalist Matt Oliver and drummer Jordan Johns hooked up with Austin Jones (bass), began performing as TV Torso and recording a hodgepodge brand of avant-pop with an affinity for in-studio tape experimentation. A couple of 7" singles preceded last summer's Status Quo Vadis EP, their most consistent release yet; you can listen to all of it over at their bandcamp. They've also changed their line-up, replacing Jones with Jimmy Rhea and adding Ben Maddox of Hundred Visions as a second guitarist. more ›

Fader takes a look at Austin, new music teasers from TV Torso, and more. more ›

White Rabbits played a show at Emo's outside with local openers The Sour Notes and TV Torso. John Pesina? He was there. So there. more ›

Although White Rabbits' last album dropped almost two years ago, they are stopping by Emo's tonight in the midst of a mini-Texas tour. more ›

One might argue that Wire is not a household name. But that depends on in which house you live. For a growing legion, the first-wave British postpunk band is one of the most influential artists of all time. Wire has been cited as an inspiration for or covered by R.E.M., Guided By Voices, the Cure, Mission of Burma, Minor Threat, Henry Rollins, Manic Street Preachers, Elastica (who were so inspired they got sued for plagiarism), the Feelies, Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand, the Minutemen and even My Bloody Valentine. more ›

In an interview leading up to last year’s SXSW, lead singer and guitarist of TV Torso, Matt Oliver, described his band’s sound by saying, “I have a guitar. That's it.” And that simple statement seems to sum up the band’s musical sensibility pretty well - it’s no frills, straight ahead rock with a classic bent and plenty of feel-good hooks. more ›

When Tokyo Police Club last played Austin seven months ago, they opened for young guns Passion Pit at Stubb's. This time around, TPC takes central billing at La Zona Rosa. Also on the lineup tonight, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin and local rockers TV Torso open up the entire evening; doors at 7pm. more ›

Carnivores are a band content with not being content. The Atlanta quartet is young in years but come with a sound that’s continuously being tinkered with. Pixies are an obvious referential starting point—their skuzzy noise-punk and girl-guy vocal dynamics certainly point in that direction. But Carnivores’ fresh-faced approach sets them apart. No sound is out of bounds, yielding a wide-eyed, psychedelic set of punk rock that’s firmly rooted in both the past and the future. more ›

The San Francisco band Film School counts itself as adherents to shoegaze, that late ‘80s/early ‘90s sound that utilized titanic walls of sound to pummel the listener with waves of sparkling distortion. But being this far removed from shoegaze’s heyday means the band can experiment with the genre, allowing other influences to creep into the mix. more ›

When it comes to Texas indie rock, Spoon rules the roost. This inconvenient truth has not gone unnoticed by the ex-Sound Teamers who head TV Torso. more ›

The dissolution of Sound Team in 2007 - one of the more promising Austin acts in recent memory - had a silver lining. The two principal forces behind the band (Bill Baird and Matt Oliver) may have parted company, but that means fans get double the amount of music from these immensely talented songwriters. Baird releases albums at a steady clip under the moniker Sunset, while Oliver heads up TV Torso with the help of former Sound Team drummer Jordan Johns and new recruit Jimmy Rhea on bass. more ›

Last October's sold-out Dirty Projectors show at Antone's was made all that much sweeter thanks to the talented opening act, Givers, a cheerful Lafayette five-piece with a terrific stage presence. more ›

On Thursday though, the entertainment on offer at Beerland is all local -- enjoy agreeable blues-pop from The Happen-Ins, brooding post-punk from Dirty Dancing, and stirring indie-rock from TV Torso. The WOXY DJs will also be on hand, spinning choice tunes, no doubt. Matt Oliver from TV Torso was kind enough to answer some questions for us over email earlier this week, complete with a plethora of guiding Gmail emoticons, which, according to him, “pretty much say anything way better than I ever could.” more ›

Free Week rolls on tonight at The Mohawk with one of the strongest lineups of the week, as seven top-notch local bands are prepared to take over both of the Mohawk’s stages and square off against 20-degree temperatures. The forecast surely won’t discourage bravehearted music fans, and on the plus side, will likely serve as a great reminder as to exactly why brown liquor was invented.

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Yes, someone dumped a friend's ashes on the stage after Danzig performed. more ›

So you missed last night's Bleet Up, the first event leading up to what will surely prove to be the best Fun Fun Fun Fest of all time. Well fear not, music-loving citizen: you have an excellent opportunity to redeem yourself tonight by attending, and definitely not, in any way, shape, or fashion missing, the greatest installment of Local Music is Sexy yet. Even better than the Bleet Up ('cause it's free!), Austinist will take over both stages of the Mohawk and the outside stage Club Deville tonight to present sets by some of our city’s finest practitioners of the rock and roll—not to mention disorderly marching music—to help you celebrate the imminence of the only fest that offers you fun in triplicate.

The music starts at 8pm following the early-ish After the Jump blogger panel (featuring Austinist's own music editor Paige Maguire), and runs until midnight. We’re keeping mum, but there may or may not be a few surprises in store for those who stick around the Mohawk’s inside stage after the clock strikes 12. Let’s run this down one more time: free, sexy, local, music. Those are the makings of a definite must-attend event in our book. Follow the jump for a complete list of bands and set times, and we'll see you tonight! more ›

Johannesburg’s Blk Jks made more than a few new fans during their last stop in Austin for SXSW. Having built up a good head of steam with their first EP, they were one of the bands that everyone seemed to be buzzing about. Seven months later, they return to Emo’s outside with a brand-new full length under their belt, the ambitious After Robots. The record is a cavernous-sounding, guitar-based rock record that fuses elements of prog, mbaqanga, experimental noise, metal, and dub, and stands in stark contrast to Kwaito, the popular music of South Africa’s post-apartheid generation. Overall, the band and album are one of the few bright exports from a city with a 37% unemployment rate, in a country that's still struggling to build a reliable infrastructure. more ›

By now you know the lineup for this year's Fun Fest, and you're already planning your schedule. Once again, the festivities kick off on Friday night at the Mohawk and Club Deville, where Austinist hosts our annual Local Music Is Sexy party and the After the Jump Blogger's Panel along with the Austin Convention & Visitors Bureau. more ›

When Sound Team—one of Austin's more recent ill-fated major label breakthrough contenders—split up in 2007, the two principal songwriters Bill Baird and Matt Oliver went their separate ways and, as principal songwriters often do, formed new vehicles for their creative impulses. Baird had already been working as Sunset as early as 2006, and he continues to consistently release music and perform around town with that group. Until recently though, Oliver had been flying under the radar a bit. After playing a few shows earlier this year with his new trio, initially named The Minotaur, he renamed the band TV Torso (which, perhaps not incidentally, is the title of a Sound Team song), and… continued to fly underneath the radar. Until late last month that is: with a move copped straight from the Use Your Illusion playbook, Oliver & co. dropped two 7” singles on the same day. It was worth the wait for their recorded debut; both singles, whose a-sides are "The Black Mask" and "Days of Being Wild," are excellent displays of moody, intelligent, fuzzed-out pop, and are more direct than much of Oliver’s previous work with Sound Team. more ›

Chairlift’s sound is one of perpetual suspension, as if the band were all performing in a martial arts movie, flying around on wires. The signature acrobatics described in their candy-colored, Ipod-promoting single "Bruises," ("I tried to do handstands for you…") emanate from Caroline Polachek’s tumbling vocals. Her voice provides much of the lift promised by the band’s moniker on their 2008 debut, *Does You Inspire You.* more ›

WOXY will celebrate their move to Austin Sept. 6 at Scoot Inn. Black Before Red, TV Torso, English Teeth and Martin Crane will perform. more ›

The demise of Sound Team (following the release of Movie Monster) was, for the most part, considered to be a sad turn of events for the talented crew in the band. However, most of them reorganized fairly promptly and successfully -- Bill Baird’s various projects (sometimes boasting former Sound Team band mates) are already a staple of the Austin music scene. TV Torso contains Sound Team alums Matthew Oliver and Jordan Johns, along with A. Leonard Jones, and the trio has been performing intermittently around town over the last few months (initially as The Minotaurs). Now, with two 7" vinyls available for purchase on their website and a recently completed East Coast jaunt, not to mention a Le Diamant Brut feature, TV Torso is primed for take off. This Thursday, check them out at The Mohawk when they headline a quite sumptuous local bill also featuring Pink Nasty and The Authors. more ›

What’s the Deal: Gaby Moreno is a Guatemalan singer/songwriter living in Los Angeles. Her bilingual tunes blend acoustic, soul and pop into a sound that’s strong enough to win the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, which is part of the Maxell Song of the Year awards. more ›

Where to begin? If you read the title of this post and didn't pee a little, then either you're: A) a ledger-blind CPA in your mid-to-late 50s, B) a dimension-traveling psychic man-child just beginning to understand our culture, or C) a very lucky Austin resident about to have more new favorite bands than you know what to do with. Really, all three of the aforementioned will find something to swoon over in this lineup. more ›