Austin’s J’cuuzi are about as avantgarde as you can get. Or as I like to call them pop-vantgarde. They’re too electronic to be post-punk, too post-punk to be considered electronic, and a hair too melodic to be straight noise rock. But it’s hot, wild, and maybe a little dangerous, like a jacuzzi.

Their live shows match their songwriting: performing on a stage made to look like a scantily clad apartment filled with its members strutting outrageous, matching homemade costumes that could be described as sideshow couture. All the while, their insatiable high-octane energy locks you in.

“How 2 Get Everything You’ve Always Wanted 4 Free (Forever)” is a raucous, metallic beat-driven tune, growling against the woes of late stage capitalism and their solutions to it and your teetering happiness.

“How 2 Get Everything You’ve Always Wanted 4 Free (Forever)” is out now.

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If you’ve been paying attention to KUTX the last few years, you’re aware that we have a number of podcasts. One of them is Song Confessional, an effort led by Walker Lukens and Zac Catanzaro where they collect anonymous, wild stories or “confessions” from people then have a musician write a song about the confession.

Sometimes Walker and Zac will select a confession and put out an open call to their listeners to submit a song. This is the winner from their latest contest.

Austin songwriter Brittany Banowsky penned “Two Sunglass Town” a downtempo indie pop tune based on a confession about moving to a small town and days later winding-up on the front page of the newspaper for evading cops on a motorcycle for not wearing the proper eye gear. The kicker: the family had just moved there after his father had accepted a job as a dean at the town college.

You can find the full archive of Song Confessional episodes here. And you can make your own confession in the booth next week during KUTX Live at Scholz Garten.

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When a project is born from a mutual love of PJ Harvey, you know I’m all in. Pink Must began with this love shared from half a country away, but once Mari Maurice Rubio and Lynn Avery, better known as More Eaze and Iceblink respectively, were both located in Brooklyn, it was game on.

As Avery’s moniker insinuates, the duo have crafted an album with several 90’s genre-bending elements. It’s a lot like PJ Harvey wrote songs with one of the decade’s premier trip-hop groups like Massive Attack or Portishead. But then they sometimes throw-in things like strings against a vocoder, again, subverting every expectation, even as you think you’re catching on.

Post-punk and trip-hop blend beautifully on the album’s first track “Morphe Sun.” Instead of a melodic earworm, you get a solid beat keeping center on a laid-back song that waxes and wanes between different tempos and pockets of sounds for your ear to swing between.

“Morphe Sun,” from Pink Must, out now.

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The Ohio duo Illiterate Light  have been making music together for a decade: starting from humble pastoral beginnings making music while working on a farm in the Shenandoah Valle, to their latest album Arches, which saw the band splitting time between Ohio and Hollywood’s Sunset Sound, a room formerly graced by Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney with producer Joe Chiccarelli, who totes the Strokes and Beck on his CV.

In the six years since their debut album, Illiterate Light has only continued to make music that fits their headspace, whether that takes the form of something more psychedelic or garage rock. And Arches is their most live-feeling album to date, infusing the studio with the raucous, chaotic energy brought to their shows by their fans. It’s truly a love letter to them.

That energy can be experienced tonight in person at Mohawk on Red River with Philadelphia’s Caioga.

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Born in Houston, partially raised in Plano, and now an Austin resident, Marlei Dismuke has been writing and performing music since she started piano lessons at age five. Writing songs for her brothers turned into composing music for family musicals complete with choreography, and eventually truly honing her craft in high school and college, performing everything from jazz to pop to opera.

Dismuke’s myriad of musical interests pour through her songs that sometimes leans a little pop and others a little R&B, but there’s little bits of all of her talent baked in. “Fantasy” is a sultry bi-curious anthem, celebrating the female figure while being caught-up in that all-too-relatable moment of, “what do I do with these feelings?”.

“Fantasy” is out now.

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Austin’s Anastasia Hera has been blending her brand of rap and R&B for almost fifteen years. In addition to releasing her own solo work, leading her group Anastasia and the Heroes, and putting her mark on various other projects, she’s also the founder of CAKE (Creativity, Abundance, Knowledge, Education), a non-profit empowering and educating women pursuing music careers.

Her deft lyrics, sultry vocals, and smooth, earwormy beats have led her to becoming our February Artist of the Month. And, just announced today, she’s part of our line-up for KUTX Live at Scholz Garten during SXSW next month.  

As our Artist of the Month, she recently stopped by our Studio 1A to share songs from her latest album Way Outside. And now, you get a taste of what’s to come on the stage at Scholz.

“Ambitions” is on Way Outside, out now.

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Austin’s Sam Hernandez has always seen life through a different prism. Colors, textures, and the planes of reality are subjective and mere suggestions. Influenced by the bubbly music of the 50s and 60s as well as an early penchant for Jim Henson and his muppets, Hernandez writes lovely songs to capture a familiar but not quite tangible plane of existence with the band Wabi Sabi and the Sweet Littles.

As the lore behind Wabi Sabi and the Sweet Littles goes, the band was born from a clever, inspirational gnome Hernandez met on a casual walk to the grocery store. Speaking on the tenants of the ancient Asian aesthetic and philosophy of wabi sabi, relating that art can be incomplete and impermanent. And in that way, Hernandez found freedom.

“Nile Walk” is a fun retro-pop tune full of little, weird gifts, like a flute bringing a flair of whimsy and animal sounds for that altered- Henson-like full effect. It’s weird, it’s fun, it’s joyful, exactly as intended.

“Nile Walk” is the debut track from Wabi Sabi and the Sweet Littles, out now.

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When I think of Jane Ellen Bryant, the first thing that comes to mind is her vocal tool box. She’s not just a great singer; the control she has over her voice and the tricks she’s able to do with it are show stopping. She’s shows off this mastery in both the dance pop duo Jane Leo and her own solo work.

After the rousing success of Jane Leo, Bryant has returned to her solo work, but she’s brought in partner Daniel Leopold (the other half of Jane Leo) to fully actualize the next chapter of her music. Pivoting from her country pop style to a brooding singer-songwriter tone, “My Corner of the World” is a slow, reflective exercise stemming from her Saturn’s return, that lovely thing that happens around your late twenties where everything you’ve been running from or have known comes to a head and you, hopefully, go through a growth and ego death period where you redefine what’s important in your life, who you are, and who you want to be. I mean, Gwen Stefani wrote an entire No Doubt album about this.

“My Corner of the World” is out now.

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Since the early 90’s, years before the Hold Steady was a twinkle in his eye, Craig Finn has been laying down his legacy. Now over 20 albums deep into his discography, he’s set to release his 6th solo album Always Been this April.

Finn calls Always Been his most narrative album to date, dropping into the protagonist’s life during a trying time: seeking a livelihood as a clergy man despite his lack of faith and his rise and fall in the process. It could almost be the sequel to MJ Lenderman’s Manning Fireworks.

“People of Substance” is the lead single from the upcoming album, both produced by Adam Granduciel of the War on Drugs and backed by the band taking-up the session position. It drops us in at the journey’s beginning, writing to a former lover about taking inventory of his life, making peace and taking accountability, and alluding to what’s to come.  

“People of Substance” is from Always Been, out April 4th.

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From the hockey rink of the University of Utah to the mean streets of New York City comes Persona 749. After being inspired through music heard at college parties, Landon Langenbrunner and Che Landikusic started writing music, but without real direction, they were making music from a place of fun, playing around in the sandbox until something stuck. What came out of that experimentation is a fun quintet blending rock and new wave for a full-party band experience.

“Stereo Girl” is dancy tune that bumps around the ring with varying degrees of energy: when you think chaos is about to erupt, Persona 749 brings it back to center with a catchy hook…or a cowbell. And I’d reckon they’ve come full circle, now being the band on every college party playlist.

“Stereo Girl” is from the upcoming album JOCK ROCK, out February 28th.

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