Taylor Wallace

Local Al: “Hold Me – Pidän (mä pidän)”

So, you’re a runner looking for a playlist. Maybe you do a quick Spotify or Tidal search, hit the one that matches your personal taste the most, or just hit play on the first one that pops up. Maybe you go an extra step to ask a friend or consult a subreddit. Maybe. Eventually, you cobble together a perfectly timed playlist. But what if, what if you just fully composed your own?

That notion struck Finnish DJ, musician, and music curator Aleksi Pahkala, better known as Local Al. Despite being a lifelong athlete, he was forced into a position where running became a necessary method of exercise and movement – not an option he would have ever chosen for himself. But Pahkala seized the opportunity and took his previous relationships with music and musicianship to another space. Putting breakbeat structures and what he deems a subtempo (a state, not a tempo, something that moves with you) for an electronic experience fit for your spiritual and physical cardiovascular health.

His debut album Subtempo Studieds: Run Now, Understand Later is made to accompany you on your run, not necessarily dictate it. Think of it as an album for running, not exercising. And each element has been put to the test foot-to-ground by Pahkala, tying together music and biology.

Subtempo Studieds: Run Now, Understand Later is out now.

Tamir Kalifa: “Jackie’s Rock”

Even if the name Tamir Kalifa is new to you, his projects certainly are not. A member of both the orchestral-indie collective Mother Falcon and its alter ego rowdy party band Sip Sip, Kalifa’s part of two of Austin’s biggest “moment bands” of the 2010’s.

A photojournalist who splits his time between Austin and Berlin, Kalifa marries his storytelling talents on Witness, a nine-song album with each track visually represented by a set of photographs. On “Jackie’s Rock,” Kalifa gingerly pays tribute to nine-year-old Jackie Cazares, one of the victims of the Robb Elementary shooting in Uvalde in May of 2022 whose family Kalifa has grown to know in particular. The song is a beautiful demonstration of combining delicate and powerful, and here’s where Kalifa pulls out some of the Mother Falcon magic, using strings to be sun-soaked and lovely without being outwardly cheerful or disingenuous.

Witness comes out this fall.

Ramesh w/ Invoke: “Broadway” [RECORDED LIVE IN STUDIO 1A]

It’s the last week of Pride Month, and we’ve got one more great profile for you, and this one gets a little teaser.

Ramesh Srivastava spent the 00’s enchanting audiences with the catchy indie-pop group Voxtrot, a group Ramesh started after high school and moving to Europe. He brought Voxtrot back home to Texas, making them one of Austin’s most prominent bands of the 2000’s.

Part of what prompted Ramesh’s move to Glasgow was the need to seek community compared to the loneliness of being a queer half-Indian boy in Texas. After Voxtrot broke-up win 2010, some of those same demons came full circle, creating an identity crisis surrounding his queerness, religion, and culture. His innerwork through that process is encased in his upcoming solo album Search for Freedom & God, a work dealing with everything from existentialism, spirituality, love and heartbreak, and the pursuit of purpose.

Ramesh stopped by Studio 1A recently to preview some songs from the upcoming album, fully acutalized with the help of award-winning Austin string quartet Invoke. You can see the full Studio 1A at KUTX.org.

West of Rome: “Movement In Your Picture”

South Texas rockers West of Rome are here to dislodge the kernel from your craw and even offer you a spittoon so you can get that novel, satisfying “ting.” The band is made-up of childhood friends who, in the absolute tumult leading up to and including the pandemic, decided to finally come together creatively to carve out their own little slice of happiness and maybe try to make a little bit of sense of the mishegoss.

And while their alt-country-for-the-dance-hall sound does make for a perfect night in your mud kickers, the songwriting digs as deep as their energy whirrs. In “Movement In Your Picture,” the lead single off the group’s debut album Keep It Fly In the Negative Zone, singer Kevin Higgenbotham pontificates on life’s unanswered questions and windows of opportunity that were never opened past the curtains.

West of Rome brings a night freewheeling fun to the Continental Club tomorrow night for a long-awaited album release show with Warren Hood.

Magic Rockers of Texas: “Where Did My Life Go?” [Live In Studio 1A]

For about a decade, Austin power pop group Magic Rockers of Texas have been certifiable Austin Music Darlings, going through long periods of performing across town, sometimes as often as three times a week. And that’s just meeting demand.

On their new album Gorging On American Fair, Magic Rockers serve-up a more decadent version of their usual fare, in large part due to the addition of powerhouse guitarist Will Grover, freeing Campo to focus even more on his penchant for punchy, sardonic songs that make “miserable bastard” seem almost aspirational and his adept propensity for songwriting and composition. Bassist Chris Kues brings in his pedal steel to add the right touch of honky-tonk to a couple of great bar anthems, and as a drummer should, McGarrity Stanley is deftly able to hold the chaos together and throw himself in.

While Magic Rockers of Texas albums are always stellar, anyone in the know knows the real magic is in their live performance. And if you don’t know, welcome in.

Magic Rockers of Texas open for David Ramirez tonight at CBoys.

Miss Guilty: “Not the One”

Wet Hot Austin Summer is here, baby! And while we’re out all over town putting on free shows like The Drop-In and Music Under the Star, we’re here to splash some new tunes onto your summer playlist.

Members of Austin punk band Miss Guilty met in a rockabilly project over a decade ago and in 2015, they reformed into Miss Guilty, an ear-wormy punk band full of female-laced adrenaline. Six years after their debut EP Busted, the group returns with Calling Your Bluff, a punchy 6-song output bursting with Halloween-levels of ear candy without the red dye 40. Maybe a little…for the danger.

On “Not the One,” we get snarl-lipped attitude twisting the “f***-right-off” narrative into a sarcasm-leaden anthem embellished with squacky sax runs a la X-Ray Specks. So put on your Poly Styrene braces and get ready for this one, endorsed by KUTX’s Wet Hot Austin Summer.

Playing their EP release show this Sunday at Knomad over on Corona Dr., this is Austin’s Miss Guilty with “Not the One.”

Calling Your Bluff is out today. Miss Guilty plays an EP release show Sunday at Knomad Bar with Tiny Specks and Tan Mala.

Next of Kin: “Jekyll & Hyde” [Live in Studio 1A]

Our April 2025 Artist of the Month was Next of Kin, the country trio, made up of Lili Hickman, Madison Baker, and Caelin bring a breath of fresh country energy to the Austin music scene they’ve been part of individually for years.

In that time, the three fell in love with each other’s music, and each pair within the trio became fast friends. In 2024, Next of Kin released their debut single “Jekyll & Hyde,” to high praise and frequent airplay, portraying the same magic that brought together the Highwomen and Dolly, Linda, and Emmylou. From there, the path was set for the next year and a half leading up to their EP Homemaker, which came out last month with two successful shows at the Contintental Club and a recent announcement that Next of Kin will be performing at ACL Fest this fall.

You can see the full Studio 1A at KUTX.org where you can also find their My KUTX episode, and artist profiles on Lili and Madison. You can see Next of Kin at Cheer Up Charlie’s on Friday, June 20th.

JR JR: “Back to the Land”

Like the sun finally coming out from the clouds after five days of relentless summer thunderstorms, comes the new album from Detroit indie pop duo JR JR. On Back to the Land, it’s all in the name. After spending time letting their bubbly, direct indie hooks take side stage for some more experimental endeavors, here, the duo marry the two philosophies.

Like your sibling who came back from college, still the same person you love to fight with, but now with an added layer of sophistication and maturity. Back to the Land‘s title track opens with a delicate, folksy guitar melody hearkening back to the charm of 2011’s It’s A Corporate World. The album’s pervasive theme of reconnection and renewal builds up before throwing back the curtains on a shimmery, sythn-driven chorus.

Dom Francis: “Leave Your Shoes At the Door”

A long journey led Dom Francis to Austin. Originally from the northeast, Francis went through a nomadic phase taking up temporary residence in Missouri, Pennsylvania, El Paso, and now Austin. Francis’s stories and experiences in those places, and the places themselves, have all found a place in Francis’s folk-rock-fueled songs.

His previous EPs have led to his precisely appropriately named debut album The Wanderer. That title matched with Francis’s residential resume tells us to come close and take seat, but even that can’t quite prepare you for his illustrative storytelling that transports you right to wherever Francis wants. On “Leave Your Shoes At the Door,” Francis answers the gnawing question, “what would it sound like if MJ Lenderman and Belle and Sebastian collaborated?” Here, he pulls out some cuddly harmonies to match the gentle picking folk-rock melody that puts “sun-drenched room with the curtains pulled” into a sound.

The Wanderer comes out May 31st with an album release show that night at The Continental Club.

Steel Gemini: “Sound and the Fury”

Today we feature duality. Duality in name, sound, and time. Austin’s Joy Baldwin has been releasing music under the name Steel Gemini for the past several years, an electropop project that grabs your ear with punchy, tinny drumbeats shimmery synths, and pulls you in with Baldwin’s powerful, yet unexpected, jazz-meets-country vocals.

On her upcoming debut album Legendery, Baldwin offers a reimagining of seminal 80’s Austin band The Reivers’s 1985 debut album Translate Slowly, transforming their original 80’s jangle-pop sound into a darker, 2020’s electropop dream with plenty of synth lines and drum beats winking back to the album’s original era. The love and tender affection Baldwin has for this album, which she credits as probably the reason she came to Austin in the first place, pours through the album’s brilliant execution, serving you a great groove now, and a classic Austin sound to dig into later.

“Sound and the Fury” is out now; Legendery comes out this summer.

Jamie Ospina: “The Vessel”

When you’re an Austinite, words like Brownout and Superfónicos paint a very clear, distinct picture. Not only in sound, but in community and philosophy.

A distillation of this comes from Superfónicos co-founder Jamie Ospina’s debut solo album The Vessel, a collection of songs of resilience, community, and storytelling blending sonic influences from Africa and Latin America to illustrate the rich, interwoven histories and common ground between them. Together with an eclectic flock of other Austin musicians, the album is tied together under the dutiful production guide of Grammy-winning Producer and Austin music cornerstone Beto Martinez.

The Vessel’s live recording approach highlights the organic symbiosis among the musicians speaking truth to The Vessel’s thesis, laid out in the title track. Here, Ospina joins forces with Kalu James and the members of HER MANA to celebrate the endurance of African culture as the rest of the album explores all of the sounds that can be traced back to Africa as their genesis.

The Vessel is out tomorrow with a release show at the Continental Club.

Tanika Charles: “Talk to Me Nice”

On Tanika Charles’s new album Reasons To Stay, pain becomes soulful beauty and vulnerability takes center stage. More than five years after her album The Gumption, the Toronto soul singer returns with her most intimate album to date. On Reasons To Stay, she goes deep on her family history in terms of the stages of grief, exhuming skeletons representing the people who were supposed to love and protect, but failed her instead and exercising her own demons preventing Charles from reaching self-love and and accepting that she, as herself, is enough.

These harrowing themes and dark roots are explored through Charles’s bright, distinctive, harmony-stacked soul music that has earned her Juno Award nominations and a longlist nod on the Polaris Prize List. On “Talk to Me Nice,” Tanika ruminates on the human need for unconditional kindness, closeness, and acceptance from certain figures in your life in a way that translates “talk to me nice” to simply “please love me.”

Reasons to Stay is out now Record Kicks.

Murry Hammond: “Take This Heart And Lock It Up”

Old 97’s bassist Murry Hammond grew-up in Boyd, TX, a rural town outside of Ft. Worth whose population reached a staggering 1,400 residents in 2020. Growing up surrounded by wide open spaces is a metaphor for Hammond’s intrepid curiosity of the world, not only geographically, but for the people who populate it.

These themes have made their way from his lived experience into the characters illustrated in his music. Following the success of his debut solo album in 2022, Hammond got together with musical soulmates Annie Crawford, Faith Shippey, and Richard Hewitt and created a prodigious body of work yielding two albums of Hammond’s signature deeply illustrative songs and introducing strings, vintage organs, and Mellotrons for the first time.

The first album is Trail Songs of the Deep, a title that has a little bit of Hammond in every word. “Take This Heart And Lock It Up” finds us whistling out on the trail, far between pockets of civilization but in good spirits, taking in the scenery and passing the long hours with the posse sharing good songs and heavy stories. It’s a veritable example of what Old 97’s bandmate Rhett Miller calls, “the perfect distillation of [Hammond’s] grand vision.”

Trail Songs of the Deep is out July 11^th on Fluff and Gravy Records.

Eric Hilton- “Beautiful Moment”

For three decades, Eric Hilton and his groundbreaking electronic duo Thievery Corporation have been household names considered required listening for new electronic fans and general music enthusiasts alike.

Their signature downtempo blend of dub, bossa nova, lounge, and club music finds its way in Hilton’s solo work as well. On his new compilation-like album Midnight Ragas, Hilton brings a wide breadth of moods, voices, languages, and tempos to create an album that seems entirely collaborative. On “Beautiful Moment” Hilton welcomes new collaborators The Infinite Daisy Chains with vocalist Kristina Westernik-Dandridge’s rich, sultry vocals akin to Austin-based Thievery Corporation collaborator LouLou Ghelichkhani.

“Beautiful Moment” glides through cloudy, city streets on a lilt of fog, creeping, mysterious, and alluring. But simultaneously, it’s peaceful and sultry. And all of Hilton’s special little notes and tricks bring the song inward, making it feel like an intentional soundtrack for that specific setting and moment, and it’s just for you.

Eric Hilton’s album Midnight Ragas is out June 20^th, and Thievery Corporation plays Stubb’s on Saturday, June 28^th.

Sydney Raneé: “Main Girl”

L.A. native Sydney Raneé is a tour de force. In the decade she’s been releasing music, her songs have been heard in several Lifetime movies and TV shows, including Tyler Perry’s Sistas, the Dynasty reboot, and MTV’s the Real World. She’s performed at the Daytime Emmys and has even garnered regular airplay in the UK.

Her new EP Main Girl is an energy-fueled display of her bubbly brand of retro pop and R&B. On the album’s title track, Raneé uses a deliberate drum machine sound and a polished pop hook to transport us back to the 80s– a top choice for any choreographed dance or roller skate routine then or now.

Windser- “These Days”

Sometimes we need to revel in the melancholy to understand it and pick ourselves up, and sometimes we have to combat darkness with warm sunshine, finding growth and therapy in a catchy earworm. Such is the case for L.A. producer Jordan Topf AKA Windser, who mulls over and emotes on his mix of sadness and boredom in his new track “These Days,” a hooky, early Two Door Cinema Club-esque indie pop groove to lift you back up.

Topf is joined by a gaggle of impressive musicians on “These Days,” including but not limited to members of Phoebe Bridgers, Mt. Joy, and Father John Misty’s bands to fully actualize this song to get you hyped for Winder’s debut album out tomorrow.

Britny Lobas: “You Can Have It” [PREMIERE]

Austin’s Britny Lobas is a pop rock powerhouse. Originally a member of the pop rock group Corbella, Lobas broke out on her own. But her volume of output is the opposite of her volume of talent and vocal power, preserving her song coins like the Four of Pentacles and methodically doling out one banger after another, leaving fans in a regular stasis of antici…pation.

The Cleveland, Ohio native releases her new single “You Can Have It” this Friday. While this song leans more on the soul side of her sensibilities, her edge is not dulled, giving Amy Winehouse energy on a track about not throwing down with green-eyed monsters, but dropping them instead. They’re no good!

Lobas celebrates the release of “You Can Have It” this Saturday at Empire Control Room with Glass Mansions and Raycheal Winters

Felt Out: “Fruit Cart”

Austin duo Felt Out (FKA “Emme” for you fellow 2010’s Austin music scenesters) mesmerize and catch audiences off-guard with their signature blend of kitchen-sink alt-pop — no sound or notion is off-the-table, one song can be metallic and the next quite earthy, with maybe a guitar as a shared element. But the infinitely-instrumentalist duo are adept at using whatever element they reach for, tying them all together into a melodic bow, or at least a purposely semi-melodic bow with an alluring groove.

The latest single from Felt Out is “Fruit Cart,” inspired by singer Sowyma Somanath’s recent trip to India. Sung almost entirely in the South Asian language of Tamil, “Fruit Cart’s” electronic disposition creates a provocative dichotomy to a song about digging for the roots of desire.

Felt Out plays an AAPI Heritage Month show at Antone’s on May 22nd co-produced by Eastern Soul Productions.

Soccer Mommy: “Abigail” [Live In Studio 1A]

Nashville’s Sophie Allison has been releasing music as Soccer Mommy for almost a decade. Historically her albums are story-based outputs and we, the listener, are invited to have a sit and listen. Her latest album Evergreen however is simply a collection of great songs with some really great little surprises.

“Abigail” is about the purple-haired, flute-playing, amethyst loving character in the beloved cult indie game Stardew Valley. An ode to one of the game’s most popular characters, the song’s 90’s bedroom pop shimmer hearkens back to Soccer Mommy’s classic 90’s alternative sound that would certainly have anyone, especially our titular character, accepting her mermaid pendant.

And last week, Soccer Mommy announced Evergreen (Stripped), a six-song EP of acoustic versions of some of the tracks from the 2024 album, including Abigail, out June 6th.

Soccer Mommy stopped by Studio 1A for the third time earlier this month ahead of her show at Radio East to perform songs from Evergreen. See the entire session below

e. artifact: “Rightly Timed”

Songwriter and instrumentalist David Alvarez walks among the echelon of Austin musicians whose personal musical and production diversity has afforded them space in nearly every corner of the city’s music scene. Blackchyl, Sun June, and Dorio make up some of their repertoire, but now Alvarez has turned to focus on their own project, e. artifact.

e. artifact is a perfect brand of Alvarez’s style, a type of 90’s style IDM music refreshed for the old school lovers and newly presented for those yet uninitiated. While downtempo, the intricate layers play with your ear. You instantly know you like it, but it takes a few listens to pinpoint and articulate why.

“Rightly Timed” is the debut single from e. artifact, an apropos name for a song with shifting time signatures. The song has touches from other familiar Austin musicians, such as BLK ODYSSY flutist Paulo Santos and Dorio’s Chad Doriocourt. e. artifact celebrates the debut release tomorrow at Empire Control Room’s Razzfest with J. Soulja, Kassa Overall, Blackchyl, and more.