Indie Rock

AUSTIN, Texas - Among the more than 2,000 bands that descended on this city last week for the South by Southwest music festival, it is safe to say none had quite the itinerary of Boston's Debo Band. It began at noon on Friday at Joe's Crab Shack, a chain of seafood restaurants of all places. As families picked at plates of fried shrimp, the band squeezed onto the back patio and unleashed its big, brassy take on Ethiopian pop music. A high-profile admirer sat at a nearby table, grinning and nodding in sync with the beat.

Sometimes you fall in love with an album so truly, so deeply, it's difficult to move beyond it. The band makes another album, but you're still holding hands with the last one. For legions of indie-rock fans, Beach House and Best Coast made defining records like that in 2010. That was the year Beach House, the celestial duo of singer Victoria Legrand and guitarist Alex Scally, scaled euphoric heights on "Teen Dream. " On the other end of the spectrum was Best Coast's debut, "Crazy for You," a breezy valentine to the sun and sand of the band's native California and a modern redux of...

Both the new Shins and the new Shins material got a good workout — and a warm welcome — Friday night at the Citi Wang Theatre. Since the release of the pop-rockers' third album, 2007's "Wincing the Night Away," singer-songwriter James Mercer has surrounded himself with a complementary new band of musical conspirators. The group dove into tunes from the recently released "Port of Morrow" with a cheerful vigor, with Jessica Dobson in particular supplying a crisp bite with her economical but stinging guitar work.

Josh Tillman left his stint as drummer for Fleet Foxes earlier this year with a wry prediction. "Back into the gaping maw of obscurity I go," Tillman wrote on his Tumblr page. That was an awfully insecure assertion for a guy whose new album is as righteous as "Fear Fun. " As Father John Misty, Tillman has resurfaced as a cosmic cowboy who probably would have been drinking buddies with Gram Parsons and Harry Nilsson. Tillman had released solo records before joining Fleet Foxes in 2008, but none of them was as vivid as his latest.

Sometimes you fall in love with an album so truly, so deeply, it's difficult to move beyond it. The band makes another album, but you're still holding hands with the last one. For legions of indie-rock fans, Beach House and Best Coast made defining records like that in 2010. That was the year Beach House, the celestial duo of singer Victoria Legrand and guitarist Alex Scally, scaled euphoric heights on "Teen Dream. " On the other end of the spectrum was Best Coast's debut, "Crazy for You," a breezy valentine to the sun and sand of the band's native California and a modern redux of...

Josh Tillman left his stint as drummer for Fleet Foxes earlier this year with a wry prediction. "Back into the gaping maw of obscurity I go," Tillman wrote on his Tumblr page. That was an awfully insecure assertion for a guy whose new album is as righteous as "Fear Fun. " As Father John Misty, Tillman has resurfaced as a cosmic cowboy who probably would have been drinking buddies with Gram Parsons and Harry Nilsson. Tillman had released solo records before joining Fleet Foxes in 2008, but none of them was as vivid as his latest.

AUSTIN, Texas - The first truth about South by Southwest is the hardest one to accept. You cannot see and hear it all. No matter how bloodshot your eyes become, no matter how many shows you cram into a single night, this five-day music conference and festival is designed to overwhelm the senses. You might want to see Fiona Apple at 8 o'clock on a Thursday, but then you'd be missing the Shins playing down by a lake. No amount of breakfast tacos and cold Shiner Bock, the local beer of choice, will make you feel better about that.

The up-and-coming five-piece indie rock band dios is proud to hail from Hawthorne, Calif., which was once home to its idols, the Beach Boys. The group even claims to have funded the home recording of its self-titled debut album by selling pirated copies of the lost Brian Wilson masterpiece "Smile" on eBay. But the delicious eclecticism of its sound, which displays a sophisticated knack for melody, tempered with the earthy beauty of other dios heroes, including Neil Young, is totally modern.

One of the first things you see in the video for "Enough," a new song from Young Man, is the band's mastermind watching home footage of an event that actually happened. Concealed in shadows, Colin Caulfield looks on at a video of his girlfriend folding clothes. She's leaving him, and he's determined to live the moment again and again. It's a fleeting scene that's almost too much to bear, but it also encapsulates the cinematic sweep and longing so pivotal to Young Man's music. "I tend to think pretty visually," Caulfield says last month over a late lunch in Allston, a few hours...

Indie Rock Manchester Orchestra Mean Everything To Nothing Sony ESSENTIAL "I've Got Friends" Manchester Orchestra plays at the Middle East Downstairs on April 30. Manchester Orchestra is not, as its name might suggest, some Tony Wilson-produced, post-punk collaboration featuring Happy Mondays, Oasis, and the Smiths. Rather, it's an Atlanta-based indie-rock quintet that sounds like a cross between Dashboard Confessional and something that came out of Seattle's grunge scene.

Both the new Shins and the new Shins material got a good workout — and a warm welcome — Friday night at the Citi Wang Theatre. Since the release of the pop-rockers' third album, 2007's "Wincing the Night Away," singer-songwriter James Mercer has surrounded himself with a complementary new band of musical conspirators. The group dove into tunes from the recently released "Port of Morrow" with a cheerful vigor, with Jessica Dobson in particular supplying a crisp bite with her economical but stinging guitar work.

Grand finale BOSTON CECILIA Donald Teeters concludes his 45-year tenure at the helm of Boston Cecilia with a program centered on two premieres by Scott Wheeler alongside works by Arthur Berger, Donald Martino, Tom Cipullo, and Andrew Rindfleisch. 8 p.m., May 4. First Church in Cambridge. 617-232-4540, www.bostoncecilia.org JEREMY EICHLER POP & ROCK BEAR IN HEAVEN At once euphoric and silky smooth, "I Love You, It's Cool," the new album from this Brooklyn trio, is widescreen indie rock with a digital heartbeat.

AUSTIN, Texas - Among the more than 2,000 bands that descended on this city last week for the South by Southwest music festival, it is safe to say none had quite the itinerary of Boston's Debo Band. It began at noon on Friday at Joe's Crab Shack, a chain of seafood restaurants of all places. As families picked at plates of fried shrimp, the band squeezed onto the back patio and unleashed its big, brassy take on Ethiopian pop music. A high-profile admirer sat at a nearby table, grinning and nodding in sync with the beat.

AUSTIN, Texas - The first truth about South by Southwest is the hardest one to accept. You cannot see and hear it all. No matter how bloodshot your eyes become, no matter how many shows you cram into a single night, this five-day music conference and festival is designed to overwhelm the senses. You might want to see Fiona Apple at 8 o'clock on a Thursday, but then you'd be missing the Shins playing down by a lake. No amount of breakfast tacos and cold Shiner Bock, the local beer of choice, will make you feel better about that.

Hot Stove Cool Music brought out the best in people Saturday at the Paradise. Inspired musical moments occurred on the stage, while donations flowed from the audience to the event's beneficiary, Foundation to be Named Later, which funds several youth programs. Baseball writer Peter Gammons and former Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein helm the event, which began in 2000. This installment included rookies the Remains, Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, and Deer Tick alongside seasoned vets Kay Hanley and Bill Janovitz.

THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS At: Berklee Performance Center, Saturday It's tempting to wonder: Why a career veer into children's music? Why a big "adult-music" tour now, when even Goliath bands are struggling on the road? Why cleave your song catalog into selections that begin with A-M and N-Z, then play two shows at the Berklee Performance Center, each dedicated to one half of the alphabet? Why draw up such rules only to break them during said fantastic shows? They Might Be Giants' Boston stop on Saturday was the last one on the first leg of a four-part tour in support...

JOY KILLS SORROW At Club Passim, Oct. 1 at 7 and 10 p.m. Tickets: $15. 617-492-7679. www.clubpassim.com Rising Boston band Joy Kills Sorrow takes its name from a piece of bluegrass lineage: the call letters of radio station WJKS, which was home to the Monroe Brothers' show in the 1930s. And Joy Kills Sorrow uses classic bluegrass instrumentation - acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin, upright bass - and regularly plays bluegrass festivals. But Joy Kills Sorrow does not consider itself to be a bluegrass band, but rather a "modern American string band.

Brooklyn's Animal Collective has been doling out its free-form indie rock for half a decade, and to an increasing number of takers. Demand for tickets in Boston, where the band kicked off its winter tour on Tuesday night, pushed the band's performance from the Paradise (capacity 650) to Avalon (capacity 1,850). And the latter was almost sold out, too. Animal Collective is not a collective that rotates around a star, like, say, Bright Eyes, but a quartet numbering Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Geologist, and Deaken: a group of Maryland natives, who regrouped in Brooklyn...

One of the first things you see in the video for "Enough," a new song from Young Man, is the band's mastermind watching home footage of an event that actually happened. Concealed in shadows, Colin Caulfield looks on at a video of his girlfriend folding clothes. She's leaving him, and he's determined to live the moment again and again. It's a fleeting scene that's almost too much to bear, but it also encapsulates the cinematic sweep and longing so pivotal to Young Man's music. "I tend to think pretty visually," Caulfield says last month over a late lunch in Allston, a few hours before his band would...

JOY KILLS SORROW At Club Passim, Oct. 1 at 7 and 10 p.m. Tickets: $15. 617-492-7679. www.clubpassim.com Rising Boston band Joy Kills Sorrow takes its name from a piece of bluegrass lineage: the call letters of radio station WJKS, which was home to the Monroe Brothers' show in the 1930s. And Joy Kills Sorrow uses classic bluegrass instrumentation - acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin, upright bass - and regularly plays bluegrass festivals. But Joy Kills Sorrow does not consider itself to be a bluegrass band, but rather a "modern American string band.