This Washington, D.C.-based DJ duo has a pan-national feel — multilingual lyrics with techno itself as the utterly international tongue. With the Austin-based Latino sound system Ocote Soul Sounds. more at austin360.com

Louis CK is one of the best stand-ups working today, spinning hilarious, shockingly honest stories about his life and family that never fall back on shock value. (Well, except for that infamous bit about finding a barrel of duck vaginas in Chinatown.) His recent DVD Louis CK: Shameless is a riot, but fans won’t have to worry about hearing old jokes here: CK recently wrapped his newest stand-up special, Chewed Up, so expect a fresh dose of his twisted yet oddly old-fashioned comedy. Slyly sarcastic opener Todd Barry most recently delighted fans of Flight Of The Conchords with a role as a crude bongo-playing egomaniac, which should help propel sales of his new CD, From Heaven.

Man Man impressed my pants off.

Ghostland Observatory has grown big in Austin and beyond with a sound that tips toward the electro-rock likes of The Rapture and VHS Or Beta—more so the latter, thanks to a penchant for vocoder effects that skew as suspect as often as they prove stirring. The duo spent most of 2007 breaking out behind the flashy grooves of Paparazzi Lightning, an album made for nightclub hedonism that naturally felt flaccid in the harsh light of day. Not taking any chances, the new Robotique Majestique amps up the hair-band posturing even further—the mix of Euro-metal yowls and oppressively cheesy ’80s synths evokes Billy Squier as remixed by The Crystal Method—which won’t win back cynics who have already dismissed the group. It should, however, make a huge splash amongst those who value style over substance—i.e., the majority of the music-buying public. Opening: Dr. Jack.

While the Black Crowes have flown the South by Southwest 2008 coop, their new guitarist hasn’t. Previewing the Memphis trio’s upcoming showcase with chunky new blues on Hernando, Luther and Cody Dickinson throw down with growling opener Alvin Youngblood Hart, Oakland’s answer to the Mississippi Delta. Luther and Alvin have been facing off on their axes during the headliner’s set, fireworks sure to shower down on Austin’s home of Muddy Waters. – Raoul Hernandez

Blockhead – “The Art Of Walking”

The Fiery Furnaces chopped up everything from frantic blues-rock to synth-y silly pop on their 2003 debut, Gallowsbird’s Bark, and apparently haven’t tired of building entire albums from scraps since. Siblings and leaders Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger usually make those scraps charming and catchy, keeping the hooks and art-rock trickery coming at equally befuddling speeds. They’re also compulsive storytellers (they even made a concept album about their grandmother, 2005’s Rehearsing My Choir) and the tales often make the songs a little easier to follow. Then again, even those are pretty easy to lose track of on the new Widow City, on which the Furnaces’ approach is a bit less satisfying than before, but still lively and elusive. Chicago’s Pit Er Pat has toured relentlessly since its 2005 debut full-length, Shakey, honing its airy, improv-informed sound on last year’s Pyramids.

via Austin Sound:
“What better band to get us ready for Halloween than Haunting Oboe Music. We’re not sure exactly how the oboe fits into the picture, but we’ll certainly give them haunting. A song like “Hawkins” (on their Myspace) with its alternating whispers and screams can get downright nightmarish as it contorts a mellow Explosions in the Sky vibe into schizo-emo frequencies. But the group is at their best when their exploding heavy At the Drive In guitars with some synth-grooves and blaring horns thrown in for an added cacophony.”

Say Hi to Your Mom recently released their fourth album, Impeccable Blahs, a concept album surrounding the idea of vampires. Why? Because lead singer and Say Hi founder Eric Elbogen is a massive Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Natch.
Say Hi is unequivocal indie rock. They are decidedly lo-fi. They tinker with synthesizer loops but play with grinding guitars, brooding vocals, dark lyrics and sometimes playful, upbeat clap-happy tempo. Elbogen is a prolific songwriter having released three other albums in as many years.-Something Glorious

There are plenty of reasons to love Man Man, but the most compelling is its utter absurdity. Honus Honus (a.k.a. Ryan Kattner), the gravel-voiced frontman and the band’s only original member, sports an admirable moustache/half-dyed pseudo-mullet combo and does an old-fashioned boot beat-stomp while clad all in white during the band’s excellent live show. During “Push the Eagle’s Stomach,” from the Philadelphia hobo-junk-blues collective’s sophomore album, Six Demon Bag, someone (a high-pitched demon, perhaps?) screeches what sounds like “my brown eye’s blacker than yours,” simultaneously invoking scatological humor and playing off Kelis’s hit of yestersummer. Yes, Man Man thrives on the bizarre and has an almost circus-like originality. And therein lies much of the band’s charm.-Prefix Mag

Rocky Votolato began his career in power-pop band Waxwing—an outfit that featured his sibling and current Blood Brothers member Cody—but these days he favors mostly quiet singer-songwriter fare built around his voice and acoustic guitar. Votolato’s latest, The Brag & Cuss, is a small departure from his critically acclaimed 2006 effort Makers, opting for full-on alt-country instrumentation rather than the previous work’s stripped-down starkness. It’s a good record, though generic in its weaker moments, with Votolato occasionally sounding like a lesser Ryan Adams. Hopefully Votolato will bring a bit more heart-on-his-sleeve passion to the stage. Opening: Portugal The Man, The Great Depression.

A band as proudly progressive as Minus The Bear shouldn’t tread water with its third full-length. And yet Planet Of Ice triumphs precisely because it halts the group’s forward momentum in favor of hushed, brooding contemplation. The mood suits them. After the disc suffers a weak start with the grating, effects-hampered “Burying Luck” and the inconsequential “Ice Monster”—where new keyboardist Alex Rose spreads on way too much synthesized cheese—”Knights” perfects Minus’ glitch-prog with jabbing guitars, jittery effects, and Jake Snider’s tense yet smooth ruminations on sexual economics.
From there, Planets enters another dimension. With heavy debts to Pink Floyd and Adrian Belew-era King Crimson, the disc uncoils with a sinister playfulness that culminates in “When We Escape”—which sports a majestic, alien chorus that imagines Jawbox covering Alan Parsons Project. The just-as-sublime nine-minute closer “Lotus” is exactly what mid-period Cave In should have sounded like. While not a huge sonic leap forward for Minus The Bear, Planet shows the band eager—and more than able—to take a deep breath and explore its emerging maturity and depth.-The A.V. Club

This is an album that demands dozens of listens—not because it’s super-catchy, or danceable, or even particularly good-looking—but because the tangled and twisted neuroses that lie behind its cluttered appearance require a lot of time to put into sense more at Austinist.com