With just a few short days to capture the amazing talent of thousands of artists from all over the world, SXSW can be quite the whirlwind. To make things easier to digest this year, we made our predictions for 25 artists who would breakout after performing at Austin’s 2017 edition of the festival. If you have yet to hear of Kaiydo, Maggie Rogers, or The Lemon Twigs, trust us when we say they'll be everywhere soon.
Aside from our ultimate list of buzzing artists, we scoured the festival schedule for the coolest, emerging, and mainstay musicians who would be performing across the Texas capital city and had the chance to catch live sets by everyone from Lil Wayne to Future Islands to Jain. We are super stoked to share all of the coverage with you below, and to give you the chance to Track each artist on Bandsintown so you don't miss them when they come to your city for a concert.
Check out our favorite memories from SXSW 2017 now, and good luck picking a favorite (the music gods sure know we couldn't.)
Regardless of how many SX's you've attended, you still can't predict Austin weather in late winter. Over year's past, festival goers have experienced everything from scorching sunburns to improvising with their hotel blankets as jackets in the frigid wind. This year, we all lucked out with great weather pretty much the entire week. Save for a few raindrops and some breezes, the environment and atmosphere in Austin this year were perfect for donning Bandsintown tees while running from show to show, and not dying of thirst.
This year, the biggest thing that saved me personally was the WUNDERSHOWZEN smoothie from Juiceland. With almond milk, banana, spinach, hemp protein, and peanut butter, this drink stood in as breakfast, snack, lunch, or dinner when I found myself in a pinch. As you may have heard, Uber and Lyft are no longer in Austin, so the big ways to get around were the trusty Pedicabs (How do they do it?!) and new app, Ride Austin.
Aside from stand-in meals, we enjoyed ourselves at the Corner Cafe, Easy Tiger, Ironworks BBQ, and more for classic fare.
With shows everywhere from Whole Foods to The Sidewinder, we found ourselves stopping at Stubb's for a quick cornbread, and popping into non-scheduled events for a quick drink of water. Between covering our aforementioned breakout artists (Hoops were glad to be performing their last show of the festival at Cheer Up Charlie's; Jain's concert was cut short due to timing, but was still incredible; Mondo Comzo gave us chills; Palm totally turned our brains inside out; Jasmyn Burke from Weaves left the venue after her band's set at El Sapo) to checking out more incredible moments (with Nardwuar the Human Serviette making an appearance during the The Paranoyds at The House of Vans @ Mohawk; Slow Dancer providing the perfect soundtrack to a group of clouds that suddenly rolled in; a fun backstage moment with last year's Bandsintown chart buzzers Diet Cig; and White Reaper who quickly became our favorite new punk rockers), The Beast that is SXSW was hardly tamed, just the way we like it.
Who would ever think that you'd be able to catch performances by Black Pistol Fire, Little Simz, Har Mar Superstar, and more artists from completely varied genres in just one week? Anyone who's ever been to SXSW did. If you've never had the chance to go, find photos of our experience below, and start stalking the SXSW site for next year's info so you don't miss out on the incredible week of music gold.