ACL Fest 2025

Spill Tab: “Hold Me” [Backstage at ACL Fest]

ACL Fest may be but a flicker in your rearview mirror at this point, but our ACL Fest content is still poppin’ fresh. LA’s Claire Chicha is Spill Tab, a lo-fi alt pop project focused on incorporating rhythms from across time and the globe and nestling them warmly in her dulcet, mezzo soprano jazz vocals. Not surprising considering someone of French-Korean origins, born in Thailand and raised across three continents. Chicha’s humble beginnings as an industry intern have led to her own center stage success, being called one of SXSW 2022’s “buzziest artists” by The Fader. Singing in both English and French, Spill Tab is an amalgamation of all of Chicha’s cultural influences, truly lived.

Chicha stopped by the KUTX tent to perform “Hold Me,” a jazzy piece of cocktail hour perfection, with Chicha’s honey-jazz vocals tucked in a groovy bossa nova shuffle.

Girl Tones: “Blame” [Backstage At ACL Fest]

From cellos and pianos to guitars and drums. So goes the story for classically trained musicians (and sisters) Kenzie and Laila Crowe, and together the duo are Girl Tones, a project set on unlocking the secrets of the universe to discover what it is to become more than mere sentient beings. The nascent indie rock duo have toured with Silversun Pickups and fellow Kentuckians Cage the Elephant while having their first releases produced by Cage guitarist Brad Schultz.

Girl Tones popped by the KUTX tent last weekend during ACL Fest to perform a stripped-down, but still energetic version of a song you’re no doubt familiar with from the KUTX airwaves.

Briscoe: “Saving Grace” [Backstage at ACL Fest]

Austin duo Briscoe made their musical imprint back in 2023 with their coming-of-age in the Texas Hill Country debut West of It All. Now having toured extensively (“from Canada to Cancun”), their latest album Heat of July is a different type of coming-of-age output for the folk-rock duo, literally written on the road largely without any instruments within arm’s reach and steeped in metaphors of growth that happen with expanded horizons: larger arrangements, bigger harmonies, and waxing poetic on their stint with highways being the only constant. The roster on Heat of July is expanded too, wrangling in musicians from groups like Bon Iver, Houndmouth, and Hiss Golden Messenger.

Briscoe popped by our tent backstage at ACL Fest to perform “Saving Grace,” a love letter from the road sweetly extolling the strength and validation from your person back home who keeps you going through those low and lonely times on tour.

Briscoe kicks off their coast-to-coast US tour this Friday with a free show this Friday at Central Machine Works with Montclaire.

Aaron Page: “Lord Knows” [Backstage at ACL Fest]

Houston’s Aaron Page is a rising star. The R&B artist recently released his debut EP Before I Go, a meditation on vulnerability and conversations that lead to life’s great romantic pivots, for better, worse, or just more confusing. He stopped by our tent backstage at ACL Fest to perform his viral hit “Lord Knows,” a smooth, sultry inner monologue from Page on a classic tale: see a lady at a club, run through your lines and execute, hit it off, and leave together.

Check out all of ACL content here.

Judy Blank: “Toy Heart” [Backstage at ACL Fest]

Growing up in the Netherlands, Judy Blank fostered an early love for classic American cinema. She’s married that love with her stamp of DIY-indie eclecticism, sometimes leaning more Americana (something she honed during her brief time as a Nashvillian) and sometimes dreamy indie-pop, but always poetic, seemingly effortless, and marked with that signature Dutch wit and brutal honesty. Now calling Austin home, Judy Blank performed this past Friday at ACL Fest, and she stopped by our tent backstage to perform her no-delusions, not-so-love song “Toy Heart” from her new album Big Mood.

Be sure to check out all of our ACL fest coverage on our social media channels and here at KUTX.org.

The Heavy Heavy: “Happiness” [Backstage at ACL Fest]

For the last five years, UK duo the Heavy Heavy have been dancing through our airwaves with their retro-inspired brand of indie rock, injecting modern hooks and riffs with harmonies that sound positively Woodstock. We played several songs from the duo’s 2024 album One of A Kind, and they stopped backstage at ACL Fest to hang with us and perform a stripped-down version of “Happiness,” one that landed on our Favorite Songs of 2024 list, that will have you asking if this was recorded at a festival in Austin today or Newport a few decades ago.

Clover County: “Sweetest” [Backstage at ACL Fest]

A.G. Schiano is Clover County, an Athens, Georgia-based project that was largely chiseled and polished on the road while touring with acts like Lord Huron and Shakey Graves. Going through your twenties is like encountering constant change with a seemingly endless number of metamorphoses as you really cement who you are and what you’re all about. The result here is her debut album Finer Things, a sonic coming-of-age scrapbook brimming with reflection, love, and a collection of notions and mementos.

Schiano brought Clover County’s blend of classic country, indie pop, and Americana (which she’s cleverly branded “bootgaze”) to the KUTX tent backstage at ACL Fest last weekend to perform “Sweetest,” a poem deep with the metaphor that if love is like baking, in this case, one is the delicate, imperative sugar and the other is the naive chef, still learning how to treat and work with their most important ingredient.

The Animeros: “Gózalo” [Backstage at ACL Fest]

Band plays SXSW, the right person catches their set, and the big ball starts rolling. And while that treasured dream has largely been lost to obscurity, merely existing in the whispered annals of Live Music Capitol lore, Austin’s the Animeros are smack in the throes of living it. Their blend of Colombian, Mexican, and West Texas influences weaves a sonic tapestry blending boleros, psychedelia, and cumbia. Their SXSW set last year put them in the crosshairs of one Dan Auerbach, who produced the group’s debut single “Gózalo” that came out in August. A cover of “Gózalo Mulata” by Texas Latin soul artist Esteban “Steve” Jordan (AKA the Jimi Hendrix of the accordion), the trio married Jordan’s raw, emotive energy to their own psych-funk edge.

The Animeros swung by our tent backstage at ACL Fest last weekend to perform “Gózalo.” Find the video at KUTX.org.