SXSW 2016: 25 Artists You Need to See

Status: Comeback
Why You Should Pay Attention: Lavender Country, the first country musician to record an openly gay album in 1973, saw a well-deserved resurgence after the label Paradise of Bachelors reissued the self-titled record back in 2014. The voice behind the lavender, Patrick Haggerty, will bring his compelling activist anthems to the bustling festival.

Status: Emerging
Why You Should Pay Attention: Producer Jerrilynn Patton, from Gary, Indiana is at the forefront of a new generation of innovators currently reworking the Chicago dance style known as footwork. Where so much of that repetitive, hectic, synth-driven style has been sample-based, Jlin showcases original production on her latest album, Dark Energy, which Rolling Stone called one of the best electronic albums of 2015. Still, the vocal samples she chooses do stand out and set the tone, from chopped up choirs to excerpted movie quotes from The Ring and Mommie Dearest, which sum up the overall mood of Dark Energy — a little campy, but deeply creepy.

Status: Victory Lap
Why You Should Pay Attention: Smiling through your tears about the recent emo revival? You have Evan Thomas Weiss, the man behind Into It. Over It., to partially thank. The prolific Chicago musician will be bringing his confessional tales to Austin stages shortly after his latest, Standards, drops. His 2013 album Intersections is the most contemporary album to make Rolling Stone's list of the 40 Greatest Emo Albums of All Time.

Status: Emerging
Why You Should Pay Attention: Hailing from Madrid, this foursome specializes in joyously clamorous indie rock that sounds inspired by debauched nights out that end with linked-arm sing-alongs. Hinds' debut full-length Leave Me Alone mashes together the fuzz of mid-Eighties crushed-out indie, the scuzz of garage rockers like Ty Segall and the sweet hooks of classic pop, then adds carefree girl-gang vocals and lots of attitude. Their unofficial video for the shambolic "San Diego" offers a hint at the chaos that will likely ensue during their live appearances.

Status: Blowing Up
Why You Should Pay Attention: This Danish pop outfit's piano-tinged travelogue "7 Years" — which takes a long view of 27-year-old frontman Lukas Forchammer's life, particularly the direction he received from his late father — has topped the U.K. pop charts and has been steadily rising on the Billboard Hot 100. The band, made up of Forchammer and his childhood friends, make heartfelt pop reminiscent of the Fray and Augustana. After their SXSW appearances, they'll embark on a headlining tour of North America.

Status: Emerging
Why You Should Pay Attention: The solo project of Lorely Rodriguez leapt into the big time with 2015's Me, a richly textured record that turns the dance floor into a place of personal discovery. The album's brutally diaristic lyrics, and musical nods to glassy synthpop and deeply emotional R&B helped Me, which Rodriguez wrote while holed up at a friend's place in Mexico, become one of 2015's critically beloved left-field pop albums. 

Ever since he hit with 2012's effusive "Dami Duro," Davido has been one of Africa's biggest rising stars. Now that he's signed an international deal with Sony, it looks like he may become one of the world's biggest, too. To American ears, his sound seems to split the difference between dance music's uptempo beats, R&B melodies and hip-hop's effortless swag. Yet it's all incorporated through a sound that is distinctly African, with rhythms that prove to be more compulsively danceable than most things making waves on the Hot 100. His upcoming album Baddest — which he recently revealed to Fader will include a feature from rapper Future — will be a major test for African artists crossing over in the United States. But Davido is confident: "I know what kind of songs work. The music should have everything in it — Jamaican, African, American, everything."

Status: Blowing Up
Why You Should Pay Attention: This Richmond singer-songwriter's just-released No Burden is one of 2016's best indie rock debuts. Dacus' sharply observed lyrics and her band's muscular, yet slightly fuzzy crunch feels completely lived in. The intimacy of songs like the brooding "I Don't Wanna Be Funny Anymore" and the thundering "Troublemaker Doppleganger" will entice even the most harried SXSW showgoers to lean in and listen a little bit more closely. "Hopefully when you listen to a song, you can say, 'That's me,' or 'That's someone I know' — you relate to it in a way that's cathartic," Dacus told Rolling Stone.

Status: Back/Blowing Up
Why You Should Pay Attention: You probably first heard British singer/songwriter Charli XCX's brash, bratty voice on Icona Pop's "I Love It" and Iggy Azelea's "Fancy." In 2014 she built off those prominent guest spots to become a pop star in her own right with the hit "Boom Clap," but by the end of last year she'd changed trajectory, canceling the second leg of a tour with Bleachers so she could get back in the studio. In Stockholm, Charli worked with Sophie, an affiliate of the London synthpop label/collective PC Music known for the willfully artificial production style of tracks like "Lemonade." On the resulting EP, Vroom Vroom, released on Charli's new label, Vroom Vroom Recordings, the squeaky synths that Sophie favors further accentuate the pop blare that Charli has made her trademark.

Status: Blowing Up
Why You Should Pay Attention: Car Seat Headrest's driven mastermind Will Toledo makes languid indie rock with whirring, no-bullshit musings; and it's a critical smash. His debut Teens of Style was one of Rolling Stone's 50 Best Albums of 2015, and cheekily-entitled follow-up Teens of Denial is slated to release later this year on his new home of Matador Records. Though he told Rolling Stone that his music is bred from nerves and "reflects introversion," Toledo will be busting the bedroom door open and hitting many SXSW stages.

Status: Back
Why You Should Pay Attention: Desert-blues guitar virtuoso Omara "Bombino" Moctar has had no problem attracting high-profile rock fans who want to help him get his remarkable music out to the world. In 2013, Rolling Stone dubbed Bombino an Artist to Watch even before the release of Nomad, the album he travelled to Nashville to record with the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach. His follow-up, Azel, was recorded in Woodstock with the Dirty Projectors' Dave Longstreth and will be released next month. A member of the nomadic Tuareg people, Bombino had already journeyed a long way from Agadez, Niger before coming to the U.S. to record – guitars were banned and musicians were executed in the country of his birth, and he was forced to migrate to North Africa. But as dramatic as Bombino's life story is, his guitar work, influenced by Hendrix and Dire Straits but rooted in the rolling, circular patterns of West Africa, speaks for itself.

Bryan James Sledge's government name even sounds like that of an R&B star. He's not an overnight success, but with the rise of the gospel-infused single "Church" — featuring fellow Chicagoan Chance the Rapper — and his record for Schoolboy Q, "Studio," BJ has been making waves. His recently released Motown debut, In My Mind is classic R&B in an un-classic time and BJ is unafraid to go against the grain. He told Rolling Stone: "Cupid is very much busy in the club, rolling up weed, and smoking, and drinking cognac at the bar like everybody else. He's not doing his job like he used to. So I'll call myself the New Cupid."

Status: Emerging
Why You Should Pay Attention: Big Ups are mainstays in the DIY haunts of their native Brooklyn. But the quartet – who meld post-punk and post-hardcore into a wiry, thrilling affair – are making universal points about consumerism, isolation and too much information. As the band thrashes through SXSW, keep a close eye on frontman Joe Galarraga: Don't be surprised if, in mid-throttle, he wraps the microphone's long cord around himself, and then you too.

Status: Emerging
Why You Should Pay Attention: SXSW will be a homecoming for Bayonne, the one-man Animal Collective currently touring his quivering electro-pop across the northern U.S. His show is as exciting as his music. Onstage alone, the real-life Rogers Sellers layers loop upon loop, then lets them corrode as he beats old-fashioned tom-toms and snare drums. The setup traces back to a perhaps unlikely source: Phil Collins, his childhood hero. "I was always trying to imitate somebody at some point," Sellers told Rolling Stone, "and my Phil Collins obsession was how I learned to play the drums."

Status: Blowing Up
Why You Should Pay Attention: Norwegian Aurora Aksnes' folk-enhanced, synthy pop racked up millions of YouTube views and has perked up the ears of Katy Perry and Of Monsters and Men. Singles "Murder Song (5, 4, 3, 2, 1)" and "Running With the Wolves" glimmer and cut. "Lots of songs aren't even from my experiences, but they're about accepting … the dark things about yourself," Aksnes told Rolling Stone. The Glassnote signee's debut album, All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend, arrived just in time to be the talk of Texas.

Status: Back
Why You Should Pay Attention: The London duo – singer Aluna Francis and instrumentalist George Reid – refitted R&B with indie electronics on their 2013 debut, but they've since been experimenting with EDM. A DJ Snake remix toughened up the understated "You Know You Like It," giving them the biggest hit of their career, and new single "I'm in Control" grooves to the kind of light synth riff you'd hear on a Major Lazer album. Expect to hear more from their upcoming I Remember, due April 29.