Well alright, alright, alright y’all. We’ve reached the end of our open submissions for artists looking to be considered for The Deli's Best of Austin Year End Poll for Emerging Artists. Many thanks and tacos to all those that submitted their work; we took a listen to it all.

After tallying our editors' ratings for the Open Submissions stage, it’s time to release the results. Please note that to avoid conflicts no local editor was allowed to vote for bands in their own scene.

Total submissions from Austin: 25

Jurors: Jurors: Cody, Dan, Paolo

Acts advancing to our Readers/Fans Poll:

1. Hard Proof (Afrobeat) – 8.17 (out of 10)

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2. Madisons (Folk/Americana) - 7.5

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3. The Cover Letter (Alt Folk) - 7.5

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4. Jackie Venson (Blues Rock) - 7.33

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5. Tennessee Stiffs (Alt Folk) - 7.33

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6. COSMS (Post Rock) - 7.17

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7. Molybden (Folk/Americana) - 7.17

Honorable Mentions (ranked above 6.5):

Bazile, SIGNY, Booher, Paula Maya, Steady Legend, Wildcat Apollo, Indoor Creature

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WHAT’S NEXT: These results end the first phase of the poll. We will soon unveil the artists nominated by our local jurors, and then let our readers and our writers influence the poll with their vote.

Keep creating, keep supporting, and stay tuned for your chance to vote!

—The Deli Austin Staff

Wildcat Apollo is releasing 80s pop singles on us right now. Truly, we’ve been living in this time of all past eras of music being re-done and reproached by the contemporary kids as good as or better than they were originally were for a while, and Wildcat Apollo’s second single from their new album “Melt into the Ocean” is exactly that. It’s a Cocteau Twins influenced blast of a romantic pop track, but with the echoing choir indie thing of the early 2000s (itself a rehash of an 80s Paul McCartney kinda thing that itself goes back even further etc.) and a very 2016 approach to old sounds that says this is ours, and we’re gonna take it and make it like we want.

We live in the age of fast-moving everything, and one thing that’s moving so fast that it’s collapsed into itself is pop music, which has developed into music like “Red Roses” that comes off as a kind of retro-contemporary-future pop music all at one time. It’s weird that it does all these different pop things at once and doesn’t ask permission to do it. It might not be fully what many might want from pop music if we were asked to directly lay out the path we think good such music takes, and it isn’t perfect with its almost-too cutesy notes with the echoing choir shit, but it makes up for it by not caring that you might not like that and driving hard at everything the band wants the track to be. It ends up pretty endearingly done, and the track sticks in your head and gets your spirit going a bit upwards whether you'd like to admit it or not (and many will without a single problem).

Wildcat Apollo’s “Red Roses” is of the new rules pop, and it’s good fun, and you should and can listen to it below. Do that or be a stickler, hip kids of this site.

For those of y’all lookin’ to squeeze just a little more live music out of yer homebase before fuckin’ off to someplace dismal for the holidays, Austin psychpop outfit Wildcat Apollo is playing an end of the year show at Hole in the Wall on December 15 with Whiteman Dancing, The Wheel Workers and The Sunshine Feels. As a nice lil prep for that, here’s the first track released by the group online in some time, which is some good genre colliding stuff. There’s something a little Pixies and a little MGMT about Wildcat Apollo’s new track “Kaleidoscopic.” Layered, floating vocals and shimmering guitars sit on a bed of crunchy, tight electronic-style beats, taking as much from the world of recent indie electropop as from classic psychedelic music, but with the result being a song that feels more like a Pixies “Wave of Mutilation”-esque track (complete with big, twanging bass and lyrics about going “into the ocean”) in a way that takes that spirit and does its own, more modern thing with it. It’s pretty and full of little moments of balance that bely a lot of talent here, so get a listen on, and check out the show if you need yer Austin fix one last time before the Yuletide drowns us all.

Originally based in Brooklyn, Wildcat Apollo have come to call Austin home as of recent. Formed in 2012 and spending most of that time honing their sound and craft quietly in a Bushwick basement, the band is on the verge of having Austin claim them as one of their own.  The self-titled LP has warranted much attention with it's lush, psych-pop sensibilities strewn over vocalists; Cat Tassini and Taylor Eichenseer's seraphic cadence.  While not much is known about the group here in Austin, they are already making a name for themselves nationally by recently winning the Rock Category Grand Prize in the John Lennon Songwriting Competition for Session II of 2013 with the winning track “Colorado” featured below.  Wildcat Apollo is also set to appear on several dates of the Warped Tour, June 13th - June 19th and here in Austin at Holy Mountain June 29th. - Michael Maly