SXSW Takeaways Part I: Fleet Foxes, The Pigeon Detectives

Picked up on LOTS of good bands, ideas — even concepts — at SXSW. I attended the music conference previously but this was the first year that I was there for an entire week, focused especially on the Interactive conference.

I’m still going through my notes, but I can drop a couple faves off the bat. I went to Filter’s Showdown at Cedar Street on Friday in hopes of checking out The Wombats and Lightspeed Champion but walked away with an earful of The Pigeon Detectives (already big in the UK, natch) — live, they took the whole Hives/Strokes/Art Brut thing to new levels. LA peeps — they’re playing Spaceland tonight (St. Patty’s Day).

In a week filled with encouraging rock and roll, I found myself totally blown away by the gentler sounds of Fleet Foxes from Washington state. Listen below: