Song of the Day

Song of the Day > All Episodes

December 12, 2022

David Shabani: “Holiday Blues”

By: Jack Anderson

It’s the final five features for Song of the Day‘s 2022 season. We’re taking a vacation for a couple weeks, but don’t fret; we’ll be back bright and early next year. Until then we’re hanging some of the very best musical mistletoe of the past months, starting off with Austin’s own David Shabani. Born in Paris and raised in Canada, Shabani’s blessed the Live Music Capital with gripping alternative hip-hop in the vein of Lupe Fiasco, Childish Gambino, Kaytranada, and Kid Cudi. Shabani’s outstanding verbal skills, butter-smooth singing, and brilliant taste in beats have earned him supporting spots for international icons like Ashanti and Trinidad James, local legends Black Joe Lewis and Blackillac, and consistent placement as an airwave heavyweight on our Hip-Hop/R&B specialty show The Breaks. After nearly thirty live appearances since January, Shabani, along with his backing group The Nu Leopards, have had a pretty good year for themselves. Considering Shabani’s motto (“I feel good right now”), being in the moment is a gift available to anyone, anywhere. So even if you’ve got a stocking full of “Holiday Blues”, the sleigh bells, slick instrumentation, and modern Dickensian storytelling of Shabani’s latest single ought to keep your heart warm for the winter.

Episodes

May 4, 2026

Son Rompe Pera: “Reptilo”

Mexico City’s Son Rompe Pera, widely considered to be part of the impetus behind the cumbia-punk movement, have spread that gospel across 20 countries since 2019 (including a set at our SXSW Scholz Garten show in 2023 and a stop by Studio 1A last year). The group is currently on tour (their show last weekend […]

Listen

April 29, 2026

Gran Moreno: “Aztlán” [Live In Studio 1A]

KUTX’s Artist of the Month Program is powered by Austin FC Raised in Mexico and newly transplanted to Austin, brothers Ricardo and Christian Rodríguez craft songs that feel like sonic mirages—equal parts groove, grit, and atmosphere. Their music lives at the intersection of distortion and introspection, where hypnotic riffs, heavy rhythms, and emotionally charged melodies […]

Listen

April 28, 2026

Sweet Limb: “Dopamine”

Whether you’re on a dopamine detox or you’re getting your dopamine hit from visiting this website right now, Austin-based Sweet Limb’s latest single is for you. Over a sultry instrumental with twinkling accents and a thudding 808, Sweet Limb founder Chris Robinson offers to help you boost your dopamine – wink, wink. Sweet Limb releases […]

Listen

April 27, 2026

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol: “Peaches”

It’s fuzzy, it’s doomy, and it’s relentless. The new single from Austin “doom-woppers” Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol keeps in stride with the group’s brand of metal-meets-melodic hard rock, giving you a two-and-a-half-minute riff bomb of what’s in store for their upcoming album Ca$h Grab, out later this year. The band is out headlining a packed […]

Listen

April 24, 2026

Mean Jolene: “Private Plane”

The new single from Ausitn power-pop outfit Mean Jolene has it all: beautifully harmonized gang vocals with a 1960’s shimmer, 90’s female rock guitar hooks and grit, and an earnest look at the double-edged sword of escapism: a necessity for self-preservation pocked with a compulsion towards innocent complacency. And there’s something about the energy of […]

Listen

April 21, 2026

Reyna Tropical & Xiuhtezcatl: “Camino”

Cumbia meets Afro-indigenous rhythms in this one-off from Mexican-American artist and activist Xiuhtezcatl and duo Reyna Tropical. Debuted last month at Vive Latino, one of Latin America’s biggest music festivals, the song “bridges the worlds of Indigenous wisdom, diaspora, community, Queer Love and Afro Mexico and the unity and pathways that these bridges are establishing […]

Listen