On Monday, I’ll be heading towards independent music heaven in Austin, Texas where roughly 1800 bands will be playing at the SXSW Festival both officially and unofficially. The last few weeks and the weekend has and will be spent frantically RSVP’ing to parties, organising a schedule and listening to artists playing. I cannot frickin’ wait..

The SXSW website has an MP3 from nearly every band officially playing and I’m going to draw from the list to show off who I’m looking forward to seeing over the next week. The ten artists I’m most looking forward to right now are (subject to change, obviously): Devo, King Khan and the Shrines, Solid Gold, Here We Go Magic, Amanda Blank, Magic Wands, Little Boots, Casiokids, Grizzly Bear and StarFucker.

There’s also the Irish showcases which I’ll be covering for Day and Night (updated today). I’ll be posting a blog on more SXSW stuff before Monday as well as two podcasts, so for now, enjoy the songs. Also, piece on MP3 blogs by Richard Brophy with quotes from me in today’s Irish Times.

Alaska in Winter – Berlin

Alela Diane – White As Diamonds

Arsenal – Estupendo

Bang! Bang! Eche! – To The Floor

The Golden Filter – Solid Gold

Kap Bambino – Red Sign

Lemonade – Big Weekend

Dent May – Meet Me In the Garden

Magic Wands – Black magic

Radioclit – Kamphopo

Starfucker – Pop Song

Continued after the jump.

Le Castle Vania – Zero Machine

Restiform Bodies – Bobby Trendy Addendum

Mr. Lif – The Sun

Snake & Jett’s Amazing Bullit band – Ten Cities Beyond

Solid Gold – Get Over it

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – Come Saturday

We Have Band – Hear It In the Cans

Also there’s this – 3 torrents of Mp3s rom the SXSW site (1267 files, 6.15GB).