Like many of you who attended South by Southwest, our team is still recovering from this year’s awesomeness – an entire week of live music, engaging panels, Texas BBQ, drink tickets, delicious Mexican food, and getting to meet some amazing people. We’d like to send a huge thanks to all artists, managers, labels, and friends who stopped by the Pandora AMP booth in the SXSW green room. In addition to signing folks up for AMP, we were also gifting our latest batch of AMPLI-FIRE hot sauce!
But we’d also love to give y’all something else – a Pandora Community SXSW 2024 badge! If you don’t know about our new Community Badges, you can read about them here. They’re a really cool new feature – especially this commemorative SXSW one:
All this said, we really wanted to share some of our most memorable moments at this year’s event. Enjoy!
Often the best moments at SXSW are seeing bands purely by chance. Such was the case when I had the pleasure of seeing Philadelphia’s They Are Gutting a Body of Water at the Mohawk as part of The Empty Bottle’s showcase. They set up on the floor of the venue in front of the stage and proceeded to wow the crowd with their heavy mix of My Bloody Valentine-style wall of sound and post-rock song structures. Don’t miss a chance to see them live in your home town.
-Noel Morrison
These past three years attending and working at SXSW, I continually promised myself that I’m going to make it out to more showcases and meet up with more people. Well that didn’t happen this year and I’m okay with it because of where our booth was situated, I had the opportunity to see and hear probably over 50 artists and bands in our area, all of whom where mind-blowingly amazing! One in particular that stood out this year was LA-based singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist Edi Callier whose sultry and emotive R&B vocal skills and abilities (think ‘90s Tevin Campbell) deservedly drew in the largest crowd and left the ladies (myself included) positively swooning.
-Michelle Solomon
Although most of my time at this year’s SXSW was spent in the booth, I was still able to see some great live music. One band that stood out was a group from Southern California called Color Green. There was a lot of buzz about them at the New West showcase at Antone’s. And I understand why - influenced by Acetone’s cool minimalism, Spiritualized’s penchant for space-rock astral projections, Beachwood Sparks’ cosmic Americana, and the Grateful Dead’s jamtastic solos, they created their own sound that felt both familiar and new.
-Eric Shea
The first day we were at the booth I met the band Spyres from Glasgow. They are a combo of some of the things I love best: two female lead vocalists, both on guitar, and SCOTLAND! I had a listen to their new EP Karaoke Sellouts and loved it. My favorite track is "The Thing" which sits somewhere between Lucius and HAIM.
-Jamie Freedman
When I’m at SXSW, I’m definitely there for work, spending the bulk of every day in the artist green room talking to creators, and the rest of my time in meetings or connecting with MORE artists and managers. And don’t get me wrong, I love it. It’s the best part of my job, helping artists do what they do, meeting creators, connecting with artists from all over the world. But the downside of all that is that when evening rolls around, I’m always just way too tired from talking to people all day to even think about going to shows. In fact, in four years of SXSW I hadn’t seen a single show. That is until this year. My teammate Dan finally managed to drag me out, to see Brendan Benson, who we both love and who is responsible for one of our favorite records, One Mississippi. Sadly, he didn’t play any songs from that record. I started thinking maybe going out was actually a mistake. We strolled across the street and into the in-progress Shannon and the Clams performance, smack dab in the midst of their very unique version of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs.” By the end of their set, I was wiped out for sure, but my music appetite had seemingly been whetted, since the next morning, Dan and I got up early to see two of our all-time favorite bands play their legendary records front to back. Seattle’s Sunny Day Real Estate are worshipped by everyone from rock dads to punk kids, and it wasn’t hard to see why, as they tore through their iconic 1994 record Diary. Thirty years later it still sounded as innovative and as mind blowing as when I first heard it. But it was openers and emo legends the Get Up Kids from Kansas City who really did it for me. Most definitely no longer kids, they performed a pitch-perfect run through of 1999's Something to Write Home About, a super meaningful record for me – and it knocked me out. I can’t remember the last show where I sang EVERY WORD at the top of my lungs. Or actually cried, which I did during at least two songs. And that’s about as emo as it gets! So, thanks Dan for dragging me out and reminding me how much I love shows. And thanks to my awesome team for always making work somehow seem fun.
-Andee Connors
The Seattle-based Chinese American Bear stole the show (and stole hearts) at Lefty’s Brick Bar with their delightful blend of bright, deep grooves and Mandarin/English lyrics about tasty treats. Their set had everything from coordinated audience dances, to boba plushies being thrown out to the audience, to a dancing dumpling (seriously - someone came out with a dumpling mask to dance on stage). All of those theatrics were delightful side courses to the main dish, comprising their infectious hooks and stellar stage presence. Catch this band now before they’re playing arenas and shooting plushies from t-shirt cannons!
-John Venanzi
I was so close to leaving Hotel Vegas, when I stumbled upon a completely unhinged set by freaky Montreal punk rockers DVTR. The breakneck tempos, chorus-affected vocals, and insane on-stage energy gave me no choice but to mosh. They were the last band I saw that week and it was the manic send-off that I needed.
-Chris Niles
If I had to pick one band to define SXSW this year, it would be Corridor from Montréal. They played some of the most interesting and beautiful indie rock-adjacent music I have heard in a long time. They incorporate what feels like math-rock and dream-pop elements, building up to magical moments where each instrument adds its own layer of melodies. During a week where everything goes so quickly, it felt like Corridor managed to stop time.
-Julien Benatar
