The Biggest Takeaways from SXSW 2025

You don’t enjoy SXSW—the annual musical gathering in Austin, Texas every mid March. You endure it. You survive it. Here are Saving Country Music’s biggest takeaways from SXSW 2025.
You don’t enjoy SXSW—the annual musical gathering in Austin, Texas every mid March. You endure it. You survive it. Here are Saving Country Music’s biggest takeaways from SXSW 2025.
They’re Americana anti-stars, working in obscure dialects that sit between the margins of more popular styles, taking up the influences and sounds that have been orphaned by the rest of music and making them feel loved.
If you’re wondering what to look forward to hearing in country and Americana music in early 2020, let this be your guide. Here’s all the information Saving Country Music has been able to compile on the most anticipated upcoming releases, along with a more extensive catalog of releases to have on your radar & the always fun “rumor mill.”
If artists such as Luke Bell and Pat Reedy suit your fancy, Nick Shoulders will slide right into your wheelhouse. But where these artists perhaps own a deeper arsenal of original songs at the moment, Nick Shoulders distinguishes himself by possessing an incredible, world-class high voice and yodel the likes of which we’ve rarely heard.
The Deslondes is not a songwriters project per se. This is not a superpicking troupe or a project that’s all about exuding a bunch of punk energy through unplugged instruments. On paper, this band doesn’t work at all. It’s too busy, there’s no discernible frontman, and there’s nothing fashionable or cutting edge about their approach or style. But The Deslones have something that every band wants but few have…
Saving Country Music was out and about Austin, TX and its outskirts over the past week or so as part of the annual South By Southwest (SXSW) gathering, pounding the pavement and looking for the next country music artist worthy of your ears that you may never otherwise hear about. In the coming months I look forward to taking some of these discoveries and sharing them with you.