Austin duo Briscoe made their musical imprint back in 2023 with their coming-of-age in the Texas Hill Country debut West of It All. Now having toured extensively (“from Canada to Cancun”), their latest album Heat of July is a different type of coming-of-age output for the folk-rock duo, literally written on the road largely without any instruments within arm’s reach and steeped in metaphors of growth that happen with expanded horizons: larger arrangements, bigger harmonies, and waxing poetic on their stint with highways being the only constant. The roster on Heat of July is expanded too, wrangling in musicians from groups like Bon Iver, Houndmouth, and Hiss Golden Messenger.

Briscoe popped by our tent backstage at ACL Fest to perform “Saving Grace,” a love letter from the road sweetly extolling the strength and validation from your person back home who keeps you going through those low and lonely times on tour.

Briscoe kicks off their coast-to-coast US tour this Friday with a free show this Friday at Central Machine Works with Montclaire.

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Houston’s Aaron Page is a rising star. The R&B artist recently released his debut EP Before I Go, a meditation on vulnerability and conversations that lead to life’s great romantic pivots, for better, worse, or just more confusing. He stopped by our tent backstage at ACL Fest to perform his viral hit “Lord Knows,” a smooth, sultry inner monologue from Page on a classic tale: see a lady at a club, run through your lines and execute, hit it off, and leave together.

Check out all of ACL content here.

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Lush melodies, decadent fashions, and a good hang to boot. L.A.’s Lucius is no stranger to the KUTX airwaves or Studio 1A, and we always get excited with antici….pation. And they delivered. Not only did they stop by to hypnotize us with a deeply lovely performance of “Mad Love,” a song from the group’s eponymously named album about the raw and tender moments the group’s members have encountered in the last couple of years: setting down roots, creating families, and finding home, but co-lead vocalists Jess Wolfe and Holly Laesing stuck around to answer our burning questions about all of those stellar costumes.

Lucius performs this Sunday at ACL Fest at 3:30 on the Beatbox stage.

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We’re smack between ACL weekends, rolling out all kinds of nifty gifties for you from social media content to amazing performance photos to videos and free downloads of our backstage performances. Today, we take a look back at one of our favorites with an artist you can see live next week. Austin’s Luna Luna is the solo project of Kavvi, a Colombian-American artist seamlessly blending his Spanish and English roots for an infectious blend of nostalgia-tinted Latin soul with a modern indie-pop flair. The former KUTX Artist of the Month performs at 3Ten at ACL Live next Thursday, October 16th.

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For the last five years, UK duo the Heavy Heavy have been dancing through our airwaves with their retro-inspired brand of indie rock, injecting modern hooks and riffs with harmonies that sound positively Woodstock. We played several songs from the duo’s 2024 album One of A Kind, and they stopped backstage at ACL Fest to hang with us and perform a stripped-down version of “Happiness,” one that landed on our Favorite Songs of 2024 list, that will have you asking if this was recorded at a festival in Austin today or Newport a few decades ago.

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A.G. Schiano is Clover County, an Athens, Georgia-based project that was largely chiseled and polished on the road while touring with acts like Lord Huron and Shakey Graves. Going through your twenties is like encountering constant change with a seemingly endless number of metamorphoses as you really cement who you are and what you’re all about. The result here is her debut album Finer Things, a sonic coming-of-age scrapbook brimming with reflection, love, and a collection of notions and mementos.

Schiano brought Clover County’s blend of classic country, indie pop, and Americana (which she’s cleverly branded “bootgaze”) to the KUTX tent backstage at ACL Fest last weekend to perform “Sweetest,” a poem deep with the metaphor that if love is like baking, in this case, one is the delicate, imperative sugar and the other is the naive chef, still learning how to treat and work with their most important ingredient.

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Band plays SXSW, the right person catches their set, and the big ball starts rolling. And while that treasured dream has largely been lost to obscurity, merely existing in the whispered annals of Live Music Capitol lore, Austin’s the Animeros are smack in the throes of living it. Their blend of Colombian, Mexican, and West Texas influences weaves a sonic tapestry blending boleros, psychedelia, and cumbia. Their SXSW set last year put them in the crosshairs of one Dan Auerbach, who produced the group’s debut single “Gózalo” that came out in August. A cover of “Gózalo Mulata” by Texas Latin soul artist Esteban “Steve” Jordan (AKA the Jimi Hendrix of the accordion), the trio married Jordan’s raw, emotive energy to their own psych-funk edge.

The Animeros swung by our tent backstage at ACL Fest last weekend to perform “Gózalo.” Find the video at KUTX.org.

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It’s Friday, I think five planets are still in retrograde, so let’s all take a breath and let out a big ol’ “GOT DANG!” And now let’s get to the real danged thing. Stacey McCann leads the Austin blues-funk group SOB & the Dangs (and the SOB is for StaceOnBass thank you very much!). McCann’s voice was made for the blues, full of raw emotion belting from a place of a life lived. They’ve got a new EP on the way, and today we’re thrilled to share “I Don’t Mind,” a tune that takes a break from the booty shaking for an honest self-check-in and not throwing away the past, but concluding “it is what it is, and for myself, I can only look forward.”

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For ten years, London’s Warmduscher have been tantalizing audiences with their raucous brand of post-punk, weaving throbbing guitar melodies with elaborate stories about ridiculous run-ins with characters of all stripes. It’s like getting a dive bar soundtrack to the best stories you’ve heard from your favorite regular. Despite ten years and five albums under their belt, the quintet has never lost its dirty debonair attitude, and that was manifested for our Studio 1A audience last Thursday ahead of their Levitation show at 13th Floor that night. Even better, they blessed us with this classic from 2019’s Tainted Lunch.

Find the full Studio 1A video at KUTX.org.

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Kelly Willis has been a stalwart of Austin’s country and Americana scene for decades, so it’s no surprise to find her on Grey DeLisle’s new project: IT’S ALL HER FAULT: A TRIBUTE TO CINDY WALKER. For the compilation, Willis chose the 1955 tune “I Don’t Care,” written by Walker and Webb Pierce, that spent 12 weeks at the top of the Country and Western charts and later became a hit again for Ricky Skaggs in 1982, the first version of the song Willis heard. Inspired by Willis’s personal memory of performing the song with her husband and brother-in-law at a family wedding (celebrating Bruce and Charlie Robinson’s sister and the band’s longtime bass player), Willis’s take on this country swing classic strikes a particularly romantic and tender chord, like her buttery, twangy vocals always do.

IT’S ALL HER FAULT: A TRIBUTE TO CINDY WALKER is out October 10th. Kelly Willis plays a birthday bash show tomorrow night, October 2nd, at the 04 Center with BETTYSOO.

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