CAPYAC bring the party wherever they perform, so catch them livening up your Thursday night at Moroccan Lounge on January 23rd. The show precedes the release of the electro-funk duo's upcoming single "Dirty", which drops on January 31st. With festival performances and upcoming shows planned for Paris, Berlin, London, Copenhagen, Tijuana, Costa Mesa, and more, 2020 looks to keep CAPYAC busy electrifying crowds with their surreal dance and music act, during which anything can happen (including surprise pancakes, puppets, or impromptu improvisations which disappear into memory as soon as they're done). If you want to see what tricks CAPYAC have up their sleeve this year, catch them on January 23rd at Moroccan Lounge. First, check out their latest video, done for a collaboration with songwriter Annabelle Maginnis called "Little Toes". - Will Sisskind

While Jay Z and the Chili Peppers will grab the headliner time slots and majority of headlines at weekend 1 of ACL, there are a handful of Austin artists who were tapped to represent the local talent pool that are worth seeing as well. Most Austin festivals do a pretty good job of bringing in local talent, and ACL is no different. While well-known national bands like Spoon and perennial favorites like Asleep At The Wheel, are guaranteed to draw sizeable crowds - we want to spotlight our five up and coming local acts, who are snowballing with newfound momentum.

1. Mobley - (Saturday 11:30 AM @ Miller Lite Stage) 

A talent who cannot be placed neatly in a solitary genre box - Mobley blends R&B, electronica, and hip-hop for a unique twist that is credited and fortified by superior songwriting. Mobley has the most potential of any artist on this list, and possibly in the city of Austin.  See him now before you're forced to use a binoculars to see him in a few years on the headliner stage;)

2. Capyac - (Saturday 12:15 PM @ Titos Stage)

Although orginally from Georgia, these electro dance wizards know how to get a funky dance party started. A large local following and magnetic stage show means that Capyac is sure to envelope you into their indie electro fold if you give them a chance.

3. Melat - (Sunday 12:30 PM @ Titos Stage)

An Ethiopian goddess whose voice is as smooth as it is seductive, Melat blends soul and R&B  with haunting and profound songwriting.  This voice is too serene to remain an Austin secret for much longer, so an early visit Sunday to the fest is definitely in order.

4. The Black Angels - (Saturday 5 PM @ Barton Springs Stage)

While the Black Angels are known internationally and have been purveying psychedelic rock for quite some time, they still have a transformative live show and a slew of hits to keep you slack-jawed for their entire set. They may not be a shiny new band, but Christian Bland is one of Austin's most prolific songwriters for a reason, so don't miss out.

5. Missio - (Friday 1:15 PM @ HomeAway Stage)

Many Austinites do not know that Missio is a local band, although you've almost undoubtedly heard them before, but that's because they have rocketed to the national stage without having to play a decade in Austin bars. Dark moods, sinister lyrics, and addictive beats make this act definitely worth a listen at the festival.

 While SXSW features exotic music like throat-singers from the steppes of Mongolia or flute bands from the peaks of the Andes, we must not forget that some of most exhilarating music comes from our own backyard.  Here are 11 bands that will be slaying at SXSW this week.

1. Mobley (Post-Genre Pop)

Cutting vocals in the woods behind his college dorm. Mixing in the backseat of a sedan. Sneaking into the music department after hours to teach himself to play new instruments (and sneaking out before the faculty arrived in the morning). From the start, Mobley's work has been marked by solitude, ingenuity, and a drive that could only be called obsessive. Whether you experience his music on record or at one of his incredible live shows, the passion is palpable. Mobley grew up all over the world, from the Spanish Mediterranean to the California coast. Perhaps it's because of this itinerant childhood that he finds it so hard to sit still.

2. Night Drive (Synthpop)

Inspired by sci-fi cinematic landscapes, Night Drive creates modern synth-pop that explores the darker currents of abstract emotion. Infectious melodies wrapped in thoughtful lyrics with pulsing dance beats unveil a stylish, energetic sound that has been featured in film, tv and radio around the world. Touring and opening for international bands such as CHVRCHES, Robert DeLong,Tesla Boy, Miami Horror and The Psychedelic Furs, Night Drive has quickly garnered a reputation as a captivating, must see live show.

3. Leopold and His Fiction (Alt Rock)

For Leopold and His Fiction, creating an album as sublimely chaotic as Darling Destroyer took a lifetime of cultivating a kaleidoscopic musicality. Born and raised in Detroit, Daniel first began making music after finding a forgotten about guitar in his grandmother’s basement as a child. “It had only two strings, but I took it home and started studying immediately,” he recalls. He also played drums in a band at school and learned to play horns and bass, but his focus remained on the guitar. “I’m an only child and was always alone, but I was lucky enough to have an instrument I could bury myself in,” he says. “It was a kind of gold mine, having such an outlet growing up.”

4. Black Joe Lewis & The Honey Bears (Blues Rock)

Black Joe Lewis trawls the familiar intersection of blues, soul, funk, and garage rock, but he's got a few enlivening strategies to make the old formula feel fresh.

5. Los Coast (Soul Rock)

Los Coast's music is a punchy, psych-tinged, lyrical variety of soul.  For the band, comprised of Trey Privott, John Courtney, Megan Hartman, Damien Llanes, and Natlie Wright, this style of music is uniquely effective medium of communication.

6. Melat (R&B)

Born in Austin, Texas, Mélat is the eclectic soul of modern RnB. Mélat tells a story that is both challenging and inspiring crafted from her very own life experiences. It is a pure and honest reflection of her soul. From love, lust, success, to failure Mélat sings of what it means to be a human being simply longing to “be”.

7. Sweet Spirit (Cabaret Rock)

Quickly becoming the most anticipated live shows in Austin, Sweet Spirit is on a roll.  In between shows, the band found time to work with producer Steve Berlin (Los Lobos, Deer Tick) on their sophomore full-length St. Mojo. The new record comes out on April 7, 2017 on Austin label Nine Mile Records and features a bigger, more dynamic set of songs. Lead single "The Power" has already become a fan favorite at live shows, while the Queen-esque track "The Mighty" and Prince dance funk of "I Wanna Have You" take the band is exciting, unexpected new directions. Guest contributions from members of Grupo Fantasma, Mother Falcon and A Giant Dog help expand the band's already considerable sound.

8. Annabelle Chairlegs (Psych Rock)

Annabelle Chairlegs plays out around town often, exuding polished, glitzy, Sixties-inspired rock & roll fleshed out by guitar licks straddling the line between surf-y and noir. Helmed by Mackin's strange, arresting voice, usually either a powerful belt or contorted into theatrical yelping, the band commands the stage with intense authority.

9. Mr. Kitty (Gothtronica)

An artist creates to evoke a reaction, and Forrest and Isaac Ross Lemaire of Mr. Kitty are electro-goth sorcerers who succeed in creating an 8-bit dreamworld for their listeners.  Not quite neophytes, Mr. Kitty have had five previous releases, and their discography runs the gamut between wistful tracks of wintered melancholy to frenetic electro-bangers of seizure-inducing speed. The constant through all of their music is the gothic romanticism of Forrest's lyrics and the perpetually evolving innovativeness of Isaac's hard-hitting beats and crystalline synths.

10. CAPYAC (Electro-Funk)

CAPYAC is a surreal dance act made up of one half swamp baby (P. Sugz), one half agave plant (Potion). To question the origins of the band is to ponder the origin of humanity itself. When founding member Potion stumbled upon the name, half-conscious on his bedroom floor at 3 a.m., it was nonsense, much like the primordial soup from which life on this planet emerged.

11.  S U R V I V E (Instrumental Electronica)

S U R V I V E has been producing synth-heavy, horror-score-influenced compositions for years, and two of the group's members are known for crafting the critically acclaimed score for the popular Netflix series Stranger Things. For almost a decade, the band has explored these themes with drum machines and analog synths, shown on numerous EPs and on their first full-length, Mnq026 from 2012. Releasing their second full-length record 'RR7349' last September on Relapse Records, S U R V I V E kick off their 2017 globe-trotting, festival-heavy tour schedule with a series of shows for SXSW in their hometown of Austin, Texas.

Last year's Deli Austin Artist of the Year CAPYAC is back early in 2016 with a new single, and the music is as glittery and spacefunky as ever. This time though, the duo shakes up things in its attempts at making this universe a sexier place with every bit of power they can muster by having Potion, an alter ego of CAPYAC instrumental magician Delwin Campbell, commanding the spaceship with his debut CAPYAC vocal performance on gorgeous track "Talk About."

Potion's performance fits right in with the CAPYAC futuresexfunk vibe, but whereas the regular crooning of P. Sugz, aka Eric Peana, is ultradynamic and soulful, Potion comes in with a more subdued yet deeply confident and damned smooth timbre that is every bit as fitting to the coolness-dripping funk vibe that CAPYAC cultivates with seeming effortlessness.

It's just more goodness from these guys, who seem to be everywhere these days with their funky boat parties, future-leaning fashion shows and Kickstarter for preordering their full-length album, and it does our groovy hearts good to know that the reigning kings of Austin music (in The Deli's eyes at the very least, and with any justice those of the rest of the world sometime soon) are at it as hard and smooth as ever with the delicious beats and funky feats.

Listen below, and if you're liking what you hear, preorder these guys' full-length at their Kickstarter here.

Deli Readers,

Our Best of Austin Poll for Emerging Artists has been - as usual - a lengthy and painstaking journey which took us through prairies of numbers, horizons filled with band names, and a dense, (mostly) joyous rain of music. We have finally reached our destination and we can announce the final results!

1. CAPYAC

The Artist of the Year for The Deli Austin 2015, the artist voted in by our panel of Austin music folks in the know in tandem with you the public, is the inimitable future funk outfit and Austin standard carrier CAPYAC. To put it as blunt and forward as the good beats this act puts out, the win was no surprise. CAPYAC have taken their sound, their show and their presence in the music scene and have exploded them all to new heights this year. We once called them the 'smoothest music in Austin right now,' and not only has this sly scifi-appropriate spacefunk + beats duo lived up to that title with numerous spot-on spaced-out releases since our last review of them, they've also added 'most fun,' 'most consistent' and very possibly 'best live show in Austin, right now' to the list of claims they can make on the Live Music Capital of the World's local scene. Those alone are some damn chops to contend with, but since CAPYAC also had the single that was the biggest repeat play in The Deli Austin's offices this year with the cherry red, lazer-beats and deep funk glorious “Speedracer,” we really can't argue with this pick. It's been, and it continues to be, the age of CAPYAC in Austin, Texas.

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2. Annabelle Chairlegs

If there are two scenes producing at the top of their game in Austin right now that are most visible (out of many such scenes, let's not short this crazy city its talent), it'd be the beat scene, of which our contest winner CAPYAC is a member, and it would also be the psych rock side of this here music town. Among those acts bending the psych thing back around to new 2016-primed directions, Annabelle Chairlegs is perhaps the most exciting. They're also The Deli Austin's #2 Best Emerging Artist of 2015, an accomplishment this young and daring band has achieved due both to its embracing of the spirit of early psychedelic music and for where they branch off from that parent sound to express themselves in their own new and rebellious ways. They're as much punk and 80s/90s lush indie pop influenced as they are psych; pretty and layered when they're being edgy and poppy and druggy, and pretty even when they are actually trying to be pretty. It's hard to do both of those at the same time, but 2015's Watermelon Summer was a debut album that is very likely to be the soundtrack of this summer in Austin for the young and ultra-hip in the hippy/psych scene, just as it was last summer. These young art partiers, with their bubblegum hair-sporting banshee songstress and dreamy pop singles, are one of the acts we think very well could break out of this city in a big way. With a second place showing in our contest, it looks like the rest of Austin agrees with us.

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3. Tomar and the FCs

The thing about real, good soul is that it says it right there in the name: it's gotta hit you in the soul. That shit can't be faked; though many try to achieve it, soul isn't something that can be tried at or denied when it's heard in its real form. It hits you, in your own soul like a burning weight, and you know you're hearing it done right. And, when you hear it done right, you know just why it is so good, and why that's important. Tomar and the FCs, our third place band this year, are soul. They're soul, and they're good, and it's cool as fuck. They put out songs that sound like new classics, like the guys writing and performing them know their musical history and just went and inserted themselves into the soul canon through the sheer quality and dedication and, to bring it back to the point, the pure fucking soul of their music. Hell, Tomar and the FCs, aren't trying to bring soul back, they've done it. They are soul, and it's just plain feel good badass sing-it-out music. To do what they do with an old sound in a day that's so aware of what's come before, and to make it feel fresh and damn fine to boogie down to, is tremendous, and Tomar and the FCs well deserve the showing they've made in our poll.

Check out our poll's top 15 below, and don't forget to get even deeper, exploring all the finalists organized by genre:

ALT ROCK - FOLK ROCK - HIP HOP + FUNK - INDIE POP - INDIE ROCK -PSYCH - PUNK/METAL - ROOTS MUSIC - SINGER-SONGWRITER

BEST OF 2015 POLL FOR EMERGING NKC ARTISTS ****** FINAL RESULTS - TOP 15 ******

ARTIST J OS R TOT   1 Capyac 8.5   0.012 8.512 2 Annabelle Chairlegs 7.5   0.028 7.528 3 Tomar & the FCs 6.5   0 6.5 4 Loteria 6   0.015 6.015 5 Cross Record 5.5   0.005 5.505 6 Carl Sagan's Skate Shoes 5.5   0.004 5.504 7 Super Thief 5.5   0.001 5.501   Mayeux & Broussard 4.5   0.014 4.514 9 The Cuckoos 3   1.5 4.5 10 Daniel Eyes & The Vibes 3   1 4 11 The Halfways 3.5   0.372 3.872 12 Sailor Poon 3   0.01 3.01 13 Hard Proof   3 0.003 3.003 14 Aaron Miller aka Multi-Tracker 3   0.002 3.002   Katy Kirby 3   0.002 3.002 Legend: J = Jurors, R = Deli Readers, OS = Open Submissions

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If you wonder how this chart came into existence, here is how it all went down: first, we let the local bands submit their music (for free), and got our Deli editors to pick the nominees. Then we polled a list of 15+ Austin scene expert (our jury) and asked them to nominate 3 more bands of their choice each (3 points for the top choice, then 2 and 1). Then we polled our readers. We tried to keep things open for each single genre, from Indie Rock to Roots Music to Hip Hop.

If you are a geek interested in all the subtelties related to how this poll works, you can read its rules here (happy reading!). But if all you care about is the awesome new music Austin produced in the year 2015, this list is all you need. Enjoy!

Many Thanks to our Jurors: Trevor Talley (The Deli Austin), Howdy Darrell (The White Horse), Austen Bailey (The Parish), Tyson Swindell (Red 7), Jason McNeely (Hotel Vegas), Ashley Bradley (Ovrld) Ben Webster (The North Door) Alice Geaccone (Witchxxdoctor) Matt Reilly (KUT Austin) Maggie Lea (Cheer Up Charlies) Margaret Galton (C3) Diane Scott (Continental Club) Shelley Neuman (ATX Streetstyle) Marcus Lawyer (Transmission Events) Jonathon Gaylon (American Icon Records) Gillian Driscoll (Sound Dessert) Alexander Dubois (Self)

Hope you'll find some awesome new artists you weren't aware of!

The Deli's Staff