MTV Newsroom › Gil Kaufman

Every year South by Southwest is like a big Lone Star and pulled-pork trough filled with bands to discover and write about. But it’s also the place where those of us who don’t live on a coast can go to find out what the hipsters are wearing and what we should start looking for at our local Salvation Army. Last year it was the throwback moon boot. The year before brought the onslaught of the painted-on boy jeans.

This year’s must-have accessory, for boys and girls? The headband. Whether it’s bejeweled, a bright orange, gold braid or just plain old sweat, the headband is what all the cool kids are rocking this year.

Check back with the Newsroom blog throughout SXSW for more highlights, and be sure to visit our sister blog You R Here for concert reviews, photos and more.

Tags austin, SXSW, SXSW08, texas

We’ve said it before, people, but it bears repeating. Along with your sound, the second most important thing any band has to do, maybe even more important than your sound in the beginning, is choose a name that’s either: a) instantly cool and/or intriguing (Nirvana, Radiohead) or so lame it’s back to being great again (Weezer, Panic at the Disco).

Clearly, many of the bands who played showcases Friday night at South by Southwest didn’t get this memo. Among them: Vancougar, Coconut Coolouts, the Show Is a Rainbow, Mittens on Strings, We Versus the Shark, Everlovely Lightningheart, Psychedelic Horses---, the Homosexuals, the Crash That Took Me, and Goat the Head.

Honorary mentions go to other bands playing the festival, including What Laura Says, Thinks and Feels, 43 Songs about 43 Presidencies, Songs for Moms, Til We’re Blue or Destroy, Ringo Deathstarr, Gorch Fock, Woodpigeon, Uh Huh Her, Death Sentence: Panda!, Collections of Colonies of Bees, I Was a Cub Scout, Does It Offend You, Yeah? and one of my favorites, DJ Pube$.

Then, there’s the names that guarantee that the band will probably never make it beyond SXSW, but we appreciate their creativity and we applaud their awesome, if scary, imaginations: A Thousand Knives of Fire, Dixie Witch, Tennessee Boltsmokers and Bible of the Devil.

Check back with the Newsroom blog throughout SXSW for more highlights, and be sure to visit our sister blog You R Here for concert reviews, photos and more.

Tags austin, SXSW, SXSW08, texas

If you’ve ever read any of my reports from multi-day festivals, such as August’s Lollapalooza, you know I hate hot weather. Like, really, really hate.

Well, luckily for us down here in Austin at South by Southwest, Friday brought record high temperatures in the low to mid-90s to the city and, well, frankly the only smell worse than Sixth Street at midnight halfway through the festival (think stale beer, sweat, a bit of upchuck and unwashed hipsters) is the hellish stench of thousands of dudes in skinny jeans, embroidered thrift store cowboy shirts and matted hair crushed into a venue with no air conditioning at 3 p.m. You’ll want to plead for a slow death, preferably one in which your olfactory senses are somehow disconnected.

So, while trying to walk from one shady sliver to another, I took some photos for an essay I like to call Cool/ Not Cool. I tried to find people who were appropriately dressed for the heat (thanks, Perry Farrell, for setting a good example in your black mesh sleeveless T-shirt; you too, guy in the white pants and panama hat).

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Tags austin, SXSW, SXSW08, texas