The 5: Best SXSW 2013 Artists

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This Week On the 5:  The Five Best Artists To Watch This Year at SXSW

SXSW has been releasing tracks from the acts playing during the festival since 2005. This year, 7.39 gigs of music were released through a torrent DRM free— that’s 1,210 tracks from as many different acts. We’ve listened to every single one, good or bad and sifted them down to our five favorites.  Here are our picks for  the five best out of the 1,210 songs released spanning every genre .   This couldn’t have been done without Ben Stolt compiling all this music into one place for us – http://www.sxswtorrent.com/2013 – big ups to Ben, forever.  All the music posted below was courtesy of Ben and sxswtorrent and the artists.

Emily Bell Grace London terraplane sun the harpoonis and the axe murderer Allah-las

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1.  Emily Bell, Back to the Way I Was.

A singer/songwriter hailing from Austin, Texas, Emily Bell sounds like an old soul but her music is infused with youth. She bounced around from Austin to Houston to the west coast, picking up her songwriting partner and producer John Evans. She’s combining southern rock blues and 60’s rock and roll into a sound that’s much needed. Her first album is set to come out in May and she’s currently playing showcases at SXSW and other venues in Texas.

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2.  Allah Las – Busman’s Holiday.

In Allah-Las’s own words, they’re trying to sound like Old, Weird Los Angeles – and they’re succeeding. Psychadelic surf rock, strange California pop, and some Brian Jonestown Massacre thrown in for good measure is what Allah-Las is bringing. They hail from Los Angeles and they sound it. You can grab their self titled LP off of iTunes.

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3.  The Harpoonist and The Axe Murderer – Roll with the Punches.  

Yes, it’s a weird name but the singer has hints of a male Macy Gray going on and it brings the blues alive in 2013. Shawn Hall and Matthew Rogers produce an organic and full sound for a band comprising of only two people and they pride themselves on not using any programming or looping. This is pure blues brought to America by two Canadians.

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4.  Terraplane Sun – Ya Never Know.

Another act out of California, Terraplane Sun hails from Venice. They’re self described as a indie/folk act, but “Ya Never Know” invokes something reminiscent of a highly produced Bill Withers sound, except these guys are white. They’ve been getting high praise from the California music journalists for their live shows and oddly enough their use of real instruments and no auto-tune.

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5. Grace London – Rocketship Girl.

Honestly, this was the biggest surprise in a playlist filled with 1,210 songs. This singer/songwriter is an astounding 13 years old at the time of this writing. These don’t seem to be arrangements or lyrics a 13 year old can pull off but she does. She’s currently living in Santa Monica. California. On her songwriting, she says “When I write songs, words spill out that really don’t make sense at all,” she says, “but when I look at it afterwards, it means something to me and I understand what I was saying when I wrote it!”  Additionally, she does a lot of charity work, so this is one busy  girl.

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The Editor
The Editor