One huge omission from our SXSW list, we only just realized—Los Angeles’ own Anderson .Paak. And no, we don’t know what the deal is with the odd period before ‘Paak’.

KCRW’s been great about playing his insanely groovy, catchy track “Am I Wrong” over the past couple months and we didn’t realize until yesterday that Anderson had trekked down to Austin for the fest. We’d really loved the song from first listen, but our real turn-on to Anderson was when we got in a Lyft last month driven by none other than Anderson’s keyboard player, who couldn’t stop singing the praises of Paak and his newly released album, Malibu, which the driver had helped him record. After listening through the whole thing, we can see why he was so psyched. We have no doubt Paak is wowing the audiences at SXSW as we write and predict huge things for him.

Listen to “Am I Wrong” below, one of the many excellent tracks from Malibu, which you can stream in full on Anderson’s soundcloud page and buy via iTunes and all the other usual suspects.

It’s that time of year again, when almost literally ever band ever makes their annual pilgrimage to Austin, Texas for South by Southwest. What started as a tiny local music festival in 1987 has ballooned to massive proportions, as we all know—I mean, the President just spoke at South by and I hear the First Lady just did a keynote with Missy Elliot and Queen Latifah, both awesome things, but not exactly…indie?

Lament as you might about the days when the festival wasn’t full of douchey brahs, selfie-takers, and worldwide-recognized bands, the music festival is still a tastemaker and, if you can cut through the massive noise of a festival that features this many bands, it can do a lot for your music.

We won’t be in attendance this year, but, were we, these are the 25 bands we would make extreme efforts to catch live, some of whom we even saw just last week—they’re that fucking good. List presented in alphabetical order for maximum fairness along with pithy snippets that fall vastly shortly of fully describing each band and images that click through to the bands’ SXSW page with showtimes or the bands’ site/Facebook page. Check bands’ site or FB pages for additional showcases in Austin though—most will play many sets in the next week or so, not all official South by showcases that’ll be listed on those pages.

Bavarian weird-pop band that you should really check out—they barely ever make it stateside. We also did a 2014 interview with the band—seem like nice guys.

Beautifully crafted pop; solo project of Vampire Weekend’s Chris Baio, featured on last month’s mixtape.

Los Angeles’ own king of catchy, lush pop; we hear he puts on a greta show too.

Chad Valley, AKA Hugo Manuel, AKA the main dude from Oxford’s Jonquil, a great, guitar-melody-driven indie band; this is his electronic solo persona, equally awesome.

I’ll be the one person ever to not mention how young this guy is and just say he writes jangly indie-pop and sounds kinda like a 12-year-old British James Mercer.

Go see her. Saw her again last week and she only gets better; simple, driven pop music built smartly around Sumner’s husky distinct voice; some validity in comparing her music to early stuff from her dad’s band, The Police…that’s a good thing.

Rightly much-buzzed about, vocally driven electronic music; featured on last September’s mixtape.

Frank, folk-infused indie pop some might call cute…for which I hope they’d get kicked; featured on this month’s mixtape.

Straight up catchy indie pop out of the Bay Area. We did an interview with primary Geographer, Mike Deni, last year.

Fun, crazy noise. Live shows said to also be fun, crazy.

Jack Garratt this month’s mixtape; slightly glitchy, R+B-y, smooth-vocal-forward electronic out of England.

Ex-xx (maybe current?); not exactly indie or small any more, but worth catching.

Solo bedroom pop project from Little Big League front woman Michelle Zauner outta Philly/Brooklyn; featured on this month’s mixtape.

A new month—and one with spring in the air, no less—means a new mixtape, and this one’s chockablock with some awesome tracks from awesome artists.

That’s right, chockablock.

Minneapolis-based Lizzo starts us off with the perfect springtime, bedroom dancing track, “Let Em Say”, a song that celebrates women, features Caroline Smith (also outta M-town), and was included in the intro of a recent Broad City (AKA, the best show ever), so win-win-win. Then we’ve got a great song from British singer-songwriter Jack Garrat; something from a band we’ve been loving of late, Los Angeles’ own Tuft (FKA Hi Ho Silver Oh), who’s new album is pretty great start-to-finish; beautiful glitch from Blackbird Blackbird (who’s playing the Echoplex next month with the excellent Chad Valley—see you there!); a new one from NYC’s TEEN, who we wrote up last fall; a really fucking cool song from Wicca Phase Springs Eternal; a song from LNZNDRF, the new collaboration between the brotherly rhythm section of The National, Scott and Bryan Devendorf, and Beirut member and National/Sufjan collaborator Ben Lanz; a way-too-catchy mopey indie pop song from Brooklyn’s Porches (AKA, Aaron Maine), who, weirdly enough, Frankie Cosmos (AKA, Greta Simone Kline) used to play bass with…also weirdly enough, Cosmos/Kline is the daughter of Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates, the latter of whom once threw her coat on Katie during a show at the Bellhouse, some think on purpose. And a ton more great music, obviously.

Give it all a listen below. And, New York friends, do not despair—warmer weather and sunshine are just around the corner! Likewise, Los Angeles friends, don’t you despair either—we’ll get through that rain tomorrow if we all stick together and keep our heads about us!

Our March mix is still in the works but, in the meantime, we wanted to share a new track by longtime favorites, Augustines, out of old home, Brooklyn, NY. Actually, as we learned in a 2014 interview we did with multi-instrumentalist and song-writer Eric Sanderson, we lived just a few blocks away from him for a good many years without knowing it.

The band just announced a coming 2016 album a few weeks back and debuted a high-energy single from the album, “Are We Alive”. Listen to track below and head over to Augustine’s site or give them a like on Facebook to stay in the know on the new full-length and coming shows.

We’ve never been huge fans of Baltimore’s Animal Collective—we like ’em but we wouldn’t wait in line for three hours in the ran to see the guys—but you’ve got to admire the unflinching audio weirdness they’re putting forth these days. And the most recent example, their single “Golden Gal” from their new album, Painting With, starts out with a line Golden Girls, which, as everyone knows, makes everything better.

Check out the trip video for it below. If you’re up for it, check out the even more bizarre “Florida”.

Well-done, you weirdos.

This morning, we heard that Anhoni—the transgendered artists formerly known as Antony and best known for his work as Antony and the Johnsons and his collaborations with, among others, Björk—announced she will be boycotting this year’s Academy Awards.

As reported yesterday by the LA Times, Anhoni was nominated for the best original song Oscar this year for her track “Manta Ray”, a song “about ecocide” she wrote with composer J. Ralph for the Discovery film Racing Extinction. Anhoni’s letter yesterday beautifully, eloquently, and heartbreakingly explains the reason, after so much initial excitement for being nominated, she decided she could not attend the Academy Awards this year:

“I am the only transgendered performer ever to have been nominated for an Academy Award, and for that I thank the artists who nominated me. (There was a trans songwriter nominee named Angela Morley in the early 70’s who did some great work behind the scenes.) I was in Asia when I found out the news. I rushed home to prepare something, in case the music nominees would be asked to perform. Everyone was calling with excited congratulations. A week later, Sam Smith, Lady Gaga and the Weeknd were rolled out as the evening’s entertainment with more performers ‘soon to be announced’. Confused, I sat and waited. Would someone be in touch? But as time bore on I heard nothing. I was besieged with people asking me if I was going to perform.” She continued—”My anxiety increased as weeks passed. I slowly realized that the positive implication of this nomination was being retracted. The producers seemed to have decided to stage performances only by the singers who were deemed commercially viable. Composer David Lang’s song “Simple Song #3” performed by South Korean soprano Sumi Jo was also omitted.”

Anhoni admits she realizes she wasn’t omitted from the performances as a direct result of being transgender, “but if you trace the trail of breadcrumbs,” she writes “the deeper truth of it is impossible to ignore. Like global warming, it is not one isolated event, but a series of events that occur over years to create a system that has sought to undermine me, at first as a feminine child, and later as an androgynous transwoman. It is a system of social oppression and diminished opportunities for transpeople that has been employed by capitalism in the US to crush our dreams and our collective spirit.”

We strongly urge everyone to read the full letter themselves at Anhoni’s site, but we just wanted to take a moment to echo Anhoni’s words and applaud her for speaking out and not just, as she writes, being “lulled into submission with a few more well manufactured, feel-good ballads and a bit of good old fashioned T. and A.” The desire to attend such a highly lauded, esteemed event, even in this year of mounting controversy, must have been near-impossible to ignore, but we are at the very least, happy she has brought this all to light and started a public discussion that will hopefully lead to much-needed progress.

You can listen to “Manta Ray” below; additionally, we highly recommend Anhoni’s excellent recent song “4 Degrees”.

The local musical tastemakers at KCRW are obsessed of late with newcomer Declan Mckenna of late…and we’re right there with them.

The young Londoner is only 17 years old and the sound he lays down on his track “Brazil” is both unique and wildly compelling. We kind of can’t stop playing it of late.

Excited to see what this kid does. From what we hear, he’s got a full-length coming out on Columbia later this year. Check out his video for “Brazil” below.

Today’s Top Tune from KCRW is especially fitting for the coming holiday weekend—Norwegian singer Ane Brun‘s new track “All We Want is Love” embodies everything that Valentine’s Days should be.

You can download it for free till midnight pacific time tonight and hear Brun performing the song live below.

Have a love-filled weekend, everybody.

Yesterday’s mixtape featured a song from a Los Angeles band—Harriet—who first caught our attention with a pretty great video for another track, “American Appetite”.

The band, fronted by Alex Castoff (formerly of Dawes and Papa), just released a debut LP of the same name last week and everything we’ve heard from it is pretty damn dope.

Watch their video for “American Appetite” below and keep an eye on the band’s Facebook page for coming live shows.

New month, new mix—that’s how we work it.

February’s mixtape features a pretty eclectic array of songs from an equally eclectic group of musicians. We’ve got a brand new one from Canadian electronic duo Junior Boys—a welcome return from a name we haven’t heard in a long while—two songs from two new Captured Tracks artists,  B Boys + Charlie Hilton, a crazy 8-bit-y love song from Perth, Australia’s Sable (via Mark Redito), a beautiful, not so new song from a Montreal band I’m late to (and that may not exist any more), The Luyas, a haunting start from Christchurch’s Doprah, and a really, really superb debut from Vampire Weekend bassist, Chris Baio, who’s going by the simplified Baio as he ventures out on his own—Bio plays Los Angeles at the El Rey tomorrow night for anyone interested, by the by. And a ton more, of course.

Give the whole thing a listen below or on our soundcloud page any time.