Three rounds of musical performers at next year’s South By Southwest music conference have been announced, with plenty of rock to go ’round.
Bruce Springsteen may be the keynote speaker, but acts like Built to Spill, Metric, the Magnetic Fields, Against Me!, Grace Potter & the Nocturnals, Talib Kweli, Oh Land and Thomas Dolby will be among the week’s music-playing headliners.
The music portion at the Austin, Texas-based conference runs March 13-18 next year, preceded by the Interactive and Film conferences.
Stars, the Expressions, Delta Spirit, Grimes, The Big Pink, Screaming Females, Dan Mangan, Gross Magic, Ganglians, Daughter, The War on Drugs, Blood Orange, Bleached, Suckers, Spector, Miracles of Modern Science, Ear Pwr, Beach Fossils, Prince Rama, Zeus and Zorch were among the other newly announced artists added today. Check out the 2012 SXSW site for all the confirmed performers thus far.
I’ll be particularly interested to see what the yield is from the Magnetic Fields set — what the lineup will be, and if new songs will be introduced (or, if time is good, supported): I feel like Stephen Merritt’s last “Realism” was released rather quietly, though his previous output “Distortion” was fairly loud, by his standards.
Metric has also been on the steady rise for more than a half dozen years. They opened for Muse just a couple years ago, but it seems now that they’d be the obvious headliner at any venue in Austin. Perhaps they’ll be previewing new cuts, too.