SXSW 2023: discover all the Italian artists performing at the festival!

An essential destination for global professionals, South by Southwest is the annual world-famous festival that takes place every March in Austin, featuring music and comedy showcases, film screenings, exhibitions and a variety of networking opportunities.

The SXSW Music Festival brings together artists, industry professionals, and music lovers from around the world to make connections, elevate their careers, and most of all celebrate the magic of live music from legendary performers to the most exciting new talents!

The next edition of the acclaimed music event will be held from March 13 to 18, 2023. Whether you’re still figuring out what to pack or you’re checking the tickets for your flight to Austin, get in the mood and learn more about the Italian artists who will be performing at SXSW: Sans Soucis, Her Skin, Big Cream, KOKO MOON, prim, Big Mountain County, The Wends, Giungla, Baseball Gregg, Dumbo Gets Mad and Arya.

SANS SOUCIS

Genre: Pop/Alternative

Schedule:

London-based singer-songwriter, producer, and guitarist Sans Soucis takes her name from a childhood nickname meaning ‘carefree’: born out of a desire to reconnect with the uninhibited joyfulness and authenticity of childhood that all of us lose as we grow older, their music is a radical act of reclamation. Receiving praise from The Guardian, Fader, Pitchfork and many more, it combines elements of Congolese Rumba, classic Italian songwriting, electronic R&B and alt-pop sounds. Accolades include the Music Music Moves Europe ‘Grand Jury’ prize, the inclusion in Spotify’s global RADAR campaign, and TicketMaster’s breakthrough artist for 2023. Recently she’s performed at several renowned music festivals and events such as Cross The Tracks, All Points East, Pitchfork Paris and Eurosonic. Her latest EP ‘On Time For Her’ is her most vulnerable work yet, tackling childhood and racial trauma and a search for her identity within Western society.

HER SKIN

Genre: Pop/Folk

Schedule:

Mar 14, 8:15 pm at Stephen F’s Bar & Terrace

Mar 15, 12:00am — 12:40am at The Stay Put

Mar 18, 12:10am — 12:50am at Las Perlas

Her Skin is an Italy-based fragmentary girl and folk-rock singer-songwriter made of love letters never sent. Her real name is Sara and she has a thing for very sad lyrics combined with delicate and light-hearted melodies. Four years after her debut album “find a place to sleep”, Her Skin released her sophomore album “I started a garden” via WWNBB in 2022, an album that deals with the mess of being in your 20s, feeling lonely and nostalgic and out of place and not really knowing where you belong.

BIG CREAM

Genre: Rock/Garage

Schedule:

Mar 15, 9:00pm — 9:40pm at The Stay Put

Mar 18, 6:00 pm at Spokesman Coffee

Big Cream was born after 3 friends from Bologna read Michael Azerrad’s “Our Band Could Be Your Life” and decided to emulate their idols from the book. Now as a 5 piece, and with some releases and touring under their belt, Big Cream are on the road blasting the songs from their latest effort “Hanging”, moving toward new sounds ranging from No wave to the hypnotic rhythms of Post Punk, while still not losing their love for 90’s indie rock that had characterized their early work.

KOKO MOON

Genre: Dream Pop/Rock

Schedule: Mar 15, 11:00pm — 11:40pm at The Stay Put

Costanza Delle Rose is known for being on the scene with Be Forest, band with which she played on countless stages of international festivals such as ESNS. After moving to London, she found fertile ground to bring her new project to life, KOKO, a deeply reflective expression of her most sincere self, with no artifacts or filters to protect her. KOKO is Costanza’s soul out in the open, brave enough to experiment with sound and new lyrical approaches, and free to be fragile and vulnerable to her feelings. After posting an unannounced video for the song “I Want to Be” in the spring of 2021, KOKO debuted with the album “Shedding Skin”, released in October 2021. Since then, the project has developed under the expanded moniker of KOKO MOON, and in January 2023 the new single “Sleep Demons” was released, anticipating new music.

PRIM

Genre: Indie Pop

Schedule:

Mar 14, 10:15 pm at Stephen F’s Bar & Terrace

Mar 15, 8:00pm — 8:40pm at The Stay Put

prim is the project of Irene Pignatti, a singer-songwriter who has always been influenced by British and American indie pop/rock music. In 2020 prim released the EP “Before You Leave”, while in 2022 the album “when monday comes”: written during the pandemic and conditioned by that period which deprived everybody of physical and social contact, leaving us waiting for a better future. In 2022 prim participated in X Factor Italy gaining overwhelming appreciation for her voice and interpretation; prim’s sad pop, influenced by alternative folk, in lively suspension between analogue tradition and modern sound, connects past and future along lyrics that reflect personal events and emotions, be it phobias and loneliness, faith and skepticism, relationships with friends or the romantic sphere. prim released her last single “Porn Magazines” in October 2022.

BIG MOUNTAIN COUNTY

Genre: Rock/Psychedelic

Schedule:

Mar 15, 11:00pm — 11:40pm at Low Down Lounge

Mar 16, 9:00pm — 9:40pm at The Stay Put

Mar 17, 1:00 pm at Hotel Vegas

Mar 17, 6:00 pm at Tweedy’s Bar

Mar 18, 7:00 pm at Spokesman Coffee

Big Mountain County is a psychsexrock band based in Rome, Italy. In just a few years the band has earned international acclaim for their European and UK tours and participation in festivals such as ESNS, SZIGET Festival and Rome Psych Fest, where the press unanimously declared them “best live band 2016”. After having published their first LP “Breaking Sound” in 2015 and the live album “Anachronicle” the year after, in 2020 the band released its second studio LP “Somewhere Else”. The music features killer riffs side-by-side with soaring vocals and synths that color midnight melodies while the lyrics range from personal narratives to journeys down an existential abyss. In January 2022, Big Mountain County released a new EP “Klaus”, with three original songs and two remixes signed by Al Lover and Hugo Sanchez. The song “The Klaus Crossing” has been included in the Spotify worldwide editorial playlist “All New Rock”.

THE WENDS

Genre: Rock/Alternative

Schedule: Mar 15, 1:00am — 1:50am at The Stay Put

Mar 16, 1:25 pm at The Side Bar

The Wends is the «frustration that you’re not enjoying an experience as much as you should, even something you’ve worked for years to attain» and you feel «as if your heart had been accidentally demagnetized by a surge of expectations». The Wends represent a new chapter for the band from Turin with the short-lived name of “Smile”: the new name reshapes the identity in more obscure and nervous songs that shift from jangly arpeggios to sharper post-punk guitars, and from a melodic singing to shouted, more expressive vocals. Their first album, “The name of this band is Smile” received critical acclaim in Italy as well as several radio airplays in the US, UK, and Spain. Their first album as The Wends, titled “It’s Here Where You Fall”, was released on October 30 2022, by We Were Never Being Boring (US/IT) and Subjangle (SA/UK).

GIUNGLA

Genre: Rock/Pop

Schedule:

Mar 15, 11:00pm — 11:40pm at Wax Myrtle’s

Mar 16, 10:00pm — 10:40pm at The Stay Put

Italian artist Ema Drei is GIUNGLA (meaning ‘jungle’ in Italian). In this sort of tangled-happy-place, minimal pop songs with an in-your-face attitude have come alive: imagine them discovered this way, as if they were torn and shredded into a million pieces fighting a battle of mixed emotions inside herself. GIUNGLA is rapidly developing a reputation for her breathtaking and visceral live show: she’s played alongside The xx, Foals, Grimes, Franz Ferdinand and Mura Masa, while being invited to play at numerous festivals across Europe and North America. After collaborating on a couple of singles with producer Luke Smith, she teamed up with Andrew Savours, known for his work with My Bloody Valentine or The Kills, and she’s currently working on her album.

BASEBALL GREGG

Genre: Indie Pop

Schedule:

Mar 14, 9:15 pm at Stephen F’s Bar & Terrace

Mar 16, 11:00pm — 11:40pm at The Stay Put

Mar 17, 3:00pm – 4:00pm at Fairweather Cider

Ma 17, 8:45 pm at The Electric Church

Baseball Gregg is a pop duo with a dual nationality from Stockton, California and Bologna, Italy. Founders Luca Lovisetto and Samuel Regan met in Bologna while Samuel was studying there. Here, their first songs took shape and were recorded in a flurry of late spring nights, eventually becoming the duo’s self-titled debut EP, “Baseball Gregg”. Sam returned to California, where in 2015 the two friends met for a second time; spending the summer afternoons shut inside Sam’s childhood bedroom, the duo wrote and recorded their debut LP “Vacation”. After publishing the EP “Ciao for Now “and the LP “Sleep”, the band started touring through USA and Europe, appearing at SXSW and Iceland Airwaves. Every month of 2019 Baseball Gregg released a new song: these 12 singles have been then compiled into “Calendar”. During the months of Covid-19 lockdown they published “Indoors” a 6-tracks collaboration EP with Chicago-based bedroom pop legend Boy Romeo. In 2022 the duo released “Pastimes”, an album composed for the first time with the full band all together in one place.

DUMBO GETS MAD

Genre: Pop/Psychedelic

Performances:

Mar 16, 3:45pm at Hotel Vegas

Mar 16, 7:30 pm at Feels So Good

Mar 16, 12:00am — 12:40am at The Stay Put

Mar 17, 8:30pm at Hotel Vegas

Dumbo Gets Mad is a psychedelic pop project based in Italy. It has been founded at the beginning of 2011 in Los Angeles by Luca Bergomi, with the release of his debut album “Elephants at the Door”, which showed a fresh approach towards a mixture of musical styles. After touring Italy and Europe, the album “Quantum Leap” was released in 2013: this album is even more textured than the previous and it explores plenty of musical genres, resolving in a mind-blowing psychedelic jam. “Thank You Neil”, released in 2015, is a more soulful record, inspired by Neil deGrasse Tyson: the live recorded album shows a more elegant and minimal approach to the production and received positive reviews. In 2019 the new single “Makes You Fly” has been released with the French Label Nice Guys, in anticipation of a new full-length album. “Things Are Random And Time Is Speeding Up” has been released in February 2021, and it has solidly confirmed the psychedelic nature of the project.

ARYA

Genre: R&B/Neo Soul

Performances: Mar 16, 8:00pm — 8:40pm at The Stay Put

Arya is an Italo-Venezuelan singer and songwriter. She is part of Atelier 71, an independent collective and music label based in Milan. Her style is warm and smooth while her lyrics are introspective; she freely moves between nu-soul and rap, hip hop and RnB. In 2021 her debut album, Peace of Mind, comes out, gaining success both from the critics and the public. She’s part of the 2022 Keychange cohort and took part in international festivals like New Skool Rules (Rotterdam, Holland) and Breakout West (Calgary, Canada). On a side note, she also lends her voice as backing vocalist for Italian artists Mahmood, Venerus and Ghemon.