SXSW 2008
Ahead of the Curve: Blue Scholars
These Seattle MCs turn down the nonsense and turn up the knowledge, cramming so much insight into every verse that...
Ahead of the Curve: Cassettes Won’t Listen
One man sound factory Cassettes Won't Listen picks up where The Postal Service left off and dances all over their...
Ahead of the Curve: Chester French
Sometimes they sound like thinned-out Pulp, other times they're The Beach Boys electroclashing with Weezer and The Fountains Of Wayne....
Ahead of the Curve: The Deadly Syndrome
Aptly named, The Deadly Syndrome is a sickness you can't get rid of – once you’ve got it you’re stuck...
Ahead of the Curve: Dizzee Rascal
Fixed up and looking sharp, this cocky cockney East End MC has gone quickly from boy in da corner to...
Ahead of the Curve: French Horn Rebellion
Milwaukee may not typically be considered the birthplace of incredibly cool dance-pop, but don’t tell that to French Horn Rebellion....
Ahead of the Curve: Grayskul
Oh, yes, goth rap. Finally. You don't need gangs and guns to make your verses unnerving. Demons and scarecrows and...
Ahead of the Curve: Kid Sister
She's a rising new school rapper who's got Kanye on speed dial and the conscious world on lock. You don't...
Ahead of the Curve: Lightspeed Champion
Half of erstwhile (do your crosswords) electro-hardcore crew Test Icicles goes on to make swoony croony romance music with swelling...
Ahead of the Curve: MSTRKRFT
Like cheese and macaroni... milk and cookies... cigarettes and diet pills... techno just tastes better with a moustache. Could that...
Ahead of the Curve: MURS
With sunbleached soul loops, forty-feet beats and dreadlocks falling all over him, Murs is in an indie rap league all...
Ahead of the Curve: The Noise Revival
Usually being called desperate is not a good thing. But in the case of the raw and ethereal quality of...
Ahead of the Curve: No Age
The fiercest, most exhilarating, most physically enormous sound in the new-do universe. No Age are young gods wielding bolts of...
Ahead of the Curve: Nyles Lannon
Don’t know what an “organic/synthetic hybrid of folky, ethereal rock” sounds like? We don’t either. But that’s just because Niles...
Ahead of the Curve: Paddy Casey
Pretty sure you could feed Paddy Casey's album -- like the actual CD -- to an infant and that baby...
Ahead of the Curve: The Ruby Suns
If Sgt Pepper had access to modern technology - mass emails, text messaging and the like - he would've had...
Ahead of the Curve: Saul Williams
Word murderer Saul Williams blurs the line between politics, music and poetry with album after album of acid tongued tirades....
Ahead of the Curve: Santogold
A little bit '80s, a little bit hip-hop, a little bit rock 'n roll...Santogold is pure heat. Slow and low....
Ahead of the Curve: Toyko Police Club
You may remember this Canadian indie outfit from when they tore up the 2007 Woodie Awards with their spazzy dance...
Ahead of the Curve: Wale
Not only does D.C. MC Olubowale Folarin (who cut his Nigerian name down to Wale) lean hard into every rhyme...
Ahead of the Curve: White Williams
Say you went to present your second grade volcano and the thing actually erupted lava and wiped out your whole...
Ahead of the Curve: Yeasayer
Yeasayer feels more like a discovery than a breakthrough. Which is to say that they don't overwhelm you with novelty...
Ahead of the Curve: Young Lords
Pretty people always want to be more than that, but the musicians from Young Lords actually are. These rockers’ songs...
Ahead of the Curve: Black Moth Super Rainbow
Skittles taste better if you keep them in your pocket awhile because the flavors and the colors all start to...
