SXSW is always overwhelming blah blah blah. This is well acknowledged so I'll spare you the melodramatics. A coworker of mine who is headed down to austin recently looked over the posted list of bands with me, and we both basically sat there just a wee bit stumped as to what we had even heard of much less were inclined to ABSOLUTELY MUST check out. So I'm going to take this one thing at a time, and see what I can find.
Lucky for me, the first band I am totally SXSW crushing on is playing SIX SHOWS down in Austin, so I'd say the odds of me getting to see them are pretty darn good. The Republic Tigers hail from the heart of the midwest (Kansas City) and have an EP out now on Chop Shop records (run by my personal hero and uber music supervisor Alex Patsavas and my super awesome ex-coworker John Rubeli).
Their album is due to drop next month and they have already (duh) been all over Gossip Girl (Chuck Bass 4-ever) and Pastavas's other shows, and I can't get this "Buildings and Mountains" song out of my head. Girlfriend obviously knows what she is doing, so here are some tunes.
The Republic Tigers - Buildings and Mountains
The Republic Tigers - The Drums