Spider House During SxSw -- Friday

Me You Us Them (NYC)

Moody, heavy repetitive bass riffs scalded silly by witty melodic vocals & buzzy guitar which slyly wink the angst away.myspace.

See Me River (Seattle Ex-Band of Horses)

Perfect night-over-Texas music handclaps straight from 60s rock, songs strummed hard & long &.vocalist Kerry Zettel, the Morrissey of the Mountains. Ex-Band of Horses, but it's more like Michael Gira's Angels of Light. myspace.

Beep Beep (Lincoln/Omaha/Saddle Creek)

Late 80s radio faux-funk justified by Gang of Four-style jaggedness & the typical Saddle Creek deconstruction. Difference? Lithe, sexy melodies that slither through cliches the way mermaids slither between the thuggish whack of oarsmen. myspace.

Brimstone Howl (Lincoln/Omaha/Alive Records)

The Gun Club compressed into a barbed-wire frisbee of fuck. The Yardbirds skunking the squares. myspace.

The Renderers (New Zealand/Siltbreeze geniuses)

Imagine Nancy & Lee robbed of the baroque orchestra & iffy pedigree crawling across the Dunedin desert to meet Sonic Youth & Giant Sand. Easily the most unsung band of the 90s. So good it might still your heart. myspace.

Planet Creature (Toronto Optical Sounds)

Simple, lovely blown-amp Toronto girl-pop with perfectly disaffected vocals. What if Shop Assistants or Vivian Girls still cared what Mary Weiss thought? myspace.

Shine Brothers (Austin/Black Angels side project)

Imagine Crazy Horse & Television glued together all wrong like an Aurora Stuka Bearcat & a Revell Gato-Class Submarine, and, try as you might, you can't quite make it sink or fly. Then add the pure imagination of The Black Angels & suddenly it does both. An incredible new band.

The Hoa-Hoa's (Toronto Optical Sounds)

Shoegaze Torontonians (Toronodons?) blissed to the gills on New Order & OMD. The ultimate "Turn up your collar to the wind & rain music." myspace.

The Vandelles (Brooklyn, NY)

The golden mean. This is Jesus & Mary Chain, Telescopes, Spacemen 3, Raveonettes, etc. at a crossroads where some wily brain-teaser devil tries to steal their big pink amplifier. They say no. The demons say.... myspace.

The Disraelis (Toronto - Optical Sounds)

Scrape the rust off VU, U2, Icicle Works, etc. & you hit the decadent Disraelis vibe, a hit & run of elegance & anthem & burning ambition. myspace.

LOWER HEAVEN (Silverlake, CA)

Spiritualized radiant vibrating electric raindrops trembling on...yeah, I know. Still, it's patently gorgeous, immaculately produced & has a frosty edge that keeps it from blurring into the deluge of New Psychedelia. Spritualized to The Tunnels' Spacemen 3 & The Black Angels' 13th Floor Elevators/Warlocks, in case you're keeping score at home. myspace.

HOPEWELL* (Brooklyn, NY)

Bold melodic heaviosity with Who-ish power chords & a vocalist who belts at the top of his range instead of mumbling into the ether. There are awesome bits of Pretty Things, White Album Beatles, Silver Apples & the wilder side of prog melted over the proceedings that make Hopewell a sure bet live.

SPINDRIFT* (US)

Morricone, snake hiss hoodoo & carnally entwined male/female vocals embedded in a swampy psychedelic sprawl. When they pull out the Edda Dell'Orso thermin vocals on "Speak to the Wind" you know you're in capably sinister hands. myspace.

WILDILDLIFE * (SF, CA)

Totally tweaked, robo-metal Plus, their Myspace page is adorned with penis & testicle-shaped chandeliers! myspace.

RADIO MOSCOW * (US)

Finally, a psych band that goes at the genre from the Funkadelic, Blue Cheer, Hendrix-ian wah-wah drenched metallic angle. Radio Moscow plays ferocious, arena-sized, butt-shaking voodoo funk that'll top off your trip like a giant rubber fluorescent Maraschino cherry. myspace.

EARTHLESS * (San Diego, CA)

Breaching whale-psych that, by all rights, should be Japanese, but happens to be homegrown. Starts as a small bruise where your third eye should be & proceeds to turn your fucking head inside out. Think Flower Travellin' Band, Wooden Shjips, Boris...Come to think of it, don't think about anything. It'll hurt less that way.

BLACK MATH HORSEMAN * (LA, CA)

Medieval, demonic, nerve-throttling sludge metal that transforms, without warning, into eerily beautiful convent dirges. A rattling procession of Black Death plague carts morphing slowly into corpse-powered 18-wheelers. myspace.

COCONUTS * (US)

CHRISTIAN BLAND AND THE REVELATORS * (Austin)

Black Angel Christian Bland's side project specializes in a more primal blues grind than his day band. These are almost Cramps-ish cave stomps slowed slightly & skullfucked with distortion & amp scuzz into a sick almost goofy ooze. myspace.

THE UPSIDE DOWN* (Portland)

Brilliant, crystalline, levitating space-folk & satellite throb, with some of the most astonishingly beautiful back-up vocals you'll hear this side of Pet Sounds. The band takes a breath, you take a breath, the wind takes a breath...repeat dosage as necessary. myspace.

NYC HOWL* (NYC)

Boogie glam slowed into exotica-tinged swirling space rock. Think Hawkwind with less patience for guitar/keyboard wank & more dank fuzzy corners & unexpected detours into Bolan/Banhardt balladry which, of course, culminate in the requisite guitar mauling. myspace.

TINY LIGHT (Seattle, WA)

SHITTY CARWASH (Austin)

The new band from Austin band vet Joe P. There's no music up on their Myspace page, but one can assume it will rock & flourish. myspace.

ASTRONAUT SUIT (Austin)

Keyboard-spangled chamber psychedelia with spine-tingling vocal arrangements that might remind you of Starland Vocal Band or Mike Curb Congregation, but end up sounding like deeply-felt gospel in these amazingly effective minimalist settings. A real find. Don't miss them. myspace.

THE TUNNELS (Austin)

And yet another worthy car is added to the rather longish Austin psychedelic trip-train. The Tunnels are Spacemen 3 to The Black Angels' Warlocks/13th Floor Elevators, using a cleaner, more deliberate strum to reach their own blissed-out corner of the cosmos. myspace.

THE SLEEP OVER DISASTER (Seattle WA)

Pretty fair approximation of the swirling Shoegaze glory days of the early '90s. myspace.

ROMANCE (Seattle WA)

The stern melodramatic side of post-punk Bauhaus lurching towards Weimar. They would probably say, "Blooming towards Weimar," but that's the kind of sinister Great Northwest Expressionists they are... myspace.

BLACK NITE CRASH (Seattle, WA)

Echo & the Bunnymen-style elegance/decadence that flexes occasionally into woozy, ultra-heavy guitar scorch (ala Thee Hypnotics). Unsurprisingly, a winning combination. myspace.

WINE AND REVOLUTION (Austin)

Reasonably sophisticated & witty three-minute pop songs with a drummer who rides his kit like he's too cool for the room (a compliment). Sweet & reasonable gentlemen playing sweet & reasonable pop with effortless hooks & challenging arrangements. myspace.

THE LEGENDARY TIGERMAN * (Coimbra, Portugal)

A sexy, Euro-trash one-man masked band in a Saville Row suit who plays electro-billy that'll lift the stripes right off your cat clothes. Like Rev & Vega without the black abyss yawning beneath the surface. myspace.

STRANGE ATTRACTORS* (Austin)

Throbbing, damn-near desperate psych-drone with a vocalist who doesn't sound like he's nodding off at the wheel & can launch into gravelly choruses with punk spit & vinegar. Rough & right on. May save an over-populated genre eventually. myspace.

FIRST COMMUNION AFTERPARTY (Minneapolis)

Really driving psychedelia, like Rain Parade with less patience for the raga drone & a really tough backbeat. There's a fierceness here that's missing in a lot of nouveau psych, like they're too anxious to get to their majestic hooks to let the guitars vibrate into eternity. Probably has something to do with being from the snowbound north... myspace.

THE WEIGHT* (LA, CA)

A FEW NICE THINGS (Austin)

Boy/Girl hoodoo blues choogle. What Austin pretends it sounds like all the time, but more often doesn't. Tight & righteous. myspace.

TERROR PIGEON DANCE REVOLT * (NYC)

Clever, cutie-pie snowboard garage pop from a band who'll probably be next year's Unicorns, but for now get by on brat energy & clever lyrics (requisite "fuck yous" aside). myspace.

WHITE RINO (Austin)

Strangely retro-political ("Symbionese Liberation Army" is a song title) gearhead roto-metal with the strangest vocalist in Austin (Lemmy meets Ian Astbury?). Either a monster waiting to happen or a genuine Austin curiosity, take your pick. myspace.

RADIOLAND MURDERS (Austin)

Grinding, fire-tonsiled garage rock with everybody-in-the-microphone choruses. Way above average Twin-Tone throttle that reminds me of the first two albums by Soul Asylum & The Replacements. myspace.

RAINBOW QUARTS (5th Stage)

INTERNATIONAL WATERS (Austin)

Churning, self-consciously glorious mid-80s indie pop like Walkmen without the bitterness & retro-swagger, early Waterboys without the elven politics, Rattlesnakes-era Lloyd Cole. It grows on you & then owns you. myspace.

ORCHID HIGHWAY (VANCOUVER BC)

Refreshingly murkless, elaborately structured pure pop with Revolver/Sgt. Pepper psych tints that never overwhelm their stories of girls & boys one crucial step from comprehending one another. myspace.

BROADFIELD MARCHERS (Louisville, KY)

Delicate, dreamy psych-pop with a fuzzy, sun-dappled glow & breathy keening vocals. This sort of thing was ubiquitous in the mid-'80s (think the Hoboken/Winston-Salem scenes from that era), but it's a welcome rarity these days. myspace.

TELEPATHIC BUTTERFLIES* (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

Jagged, slashing guitars cutting paths with cute-boy, classic soaring pop vocals. Tough & cute. Like Canada. myspace.

LOVE CITY* (Philadelphia, PA)

Love City have a real gift for the more elaborate, soulful side of Nuggets garage rock think Electric Prunes' "I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night" segueing mightily into "My Fire Department Needs a Fireman" by Shadows of the Night." Sweaty ruffled shirt music of the highest order. myspace.