17 Texas Artists to See at ACL Fest

Alongside the requisite Asleep at the Wheel kickoff performance, this year’s Austin City Limits Festival lineup welcomes its usual block of Texas talent. Stateside names like Ben Kweller and the Mars Volta hold it down across both weekends, October 6-8 and 13-15. Meanwhile, heat-mapped locals spread across the opening spots around noon. Arrive early to support the quintessential up-and-coming Austinite bucket-list spot and stroll through the gates without waiting in line.

Find the full schedule at aclfestival.com. Looking for more ACL Fest recommendations? Check out our interviews with Seminole, Tex.-born Country Music Hall of Famer Tanya Tucker and ATX R&B up-and-comer Grace Sorensen. Beyond Texas, find out top our picks for national acts playing Zilker Park here.

Angel White

Gigging up and down the streets of Deep Ellum in Dallas has become a rite of passage for songwriters working a slightly skewed angle on traditional genres. From Charley Crockett to Leon Bridges to the Texas Gentlemen, the area has helped incubate an eclectic flavor, and Angel White steps out as the latest unconfined artist from its fringes. The singer-songwriter laces a cool R&B into the country inflections of his highly anticipated debut LP, Ghost of the West, riding “If You’re Gonna Leave” and a dip into Prince/Kravitz guitar-ripped funk on “Long Way Up.” Don’t let the cowboy hat fool you.  – Doug Freeman

Ben Kweller

After a nosebleed ended his 2006 set early, there is a requisite joke to be told about Ben Kweller and ACL. Still, you can expect some measure of nostalgia from the hometown hero’s appearance. This year, Kweller played a string of 20th anniversary shows celebrating Sha Sha, the album that put the indie rock songwriter on the map. (He also released an accompanying deluxe reissue of the album.) So, despite a lot of life happening in between, the enduring image of Kweller attempting to play on with a tampon stuck up his nose 17 years ago might have a special resonance in 2023.  – Abby Johnston

Katy Kirby

With idyllic verses and eagle-eyed fiction, singer-songwriter Katy Kirby carefully reshapes her worldview, one curious glance at a time. On 2021 debut Cool Dry Place, the Spicewood, Texas, native wove lilting folk melodies with eruptive indie rock soundscapes, best heard on cheeky standout “Peppermint.” Now Brooklyn-based and signed to ANTI- Records, the singer’s expanded since her beginnings with Austin-based label Keeled Scales. August single “Cubic Zirconia” swells with staccato synths and loving adoration, a pop-tinged ode to shameless self-expression. Across changing landscapes, Kirby’s outlook remains every bit as refreshing.  – Kriss Conklin

Randall King

Randall King is honkin’ and tonkin’ his way to ACL. He’s in a class of Texas expats in Nashville whose music and aesthetics center on Western nostalgia. His first EP, Another Bullet, spelled that out, lamenting fences dividing fields and boots going unscuffed. In the seven years since, King’s lyrics, sound, and look have been polished to jukebox perfection, cementing him as a leader of modern traditionalists who view “traditional country” through a distinctly Nineties lens. King leans into tropes, but he’s also proven an ability to find poetry in the country radio lexicon. In “Shot Glass,” he recalls his first car, his first love, and his first time playing “Amazing Grace” on guitar, and asks, “How does all of that/ Fit into a shot glass?“
  – Maggie Q. Thompson

Font

With a noun for a name and a lone single buried under typeface queries, Font is elusive – online, anyway. What the Austin post-punkers lack in catalog, they deliver IRL with a freight-train stage presence and obliterating decibel levels. The ACL first-timers share a massive grandstand with headliners Kali Uchis and Kendrick Lamar. A seemingly random slot to untrained eyes (or ears), the quintet’s flooring fusions of art rock, disco, and electronic are anything but. From the skittering cacophony of debut “Sentence I” to the razor-sharp hooks of set list staple “Engines,” the Ground Control Touring signees prove perfect primers for the AmEx stage.  – Kriss Conklin

Jimmie Vaughan & Tilt-A-Whirl Band

Austin guitar’s paterfamilias performed at the inaugural ACL Fest in 2002, a two-day Zilker Park convergence fielding five stages, nearly six dozen acts, and, at some 42,000 locals, almost twice the guesstimated attendance. “Last year’s Grammy winner, Do You Get the Blues, was his third solo release, another in a series of award-winning albums that remain testament to his acclaimed guitar expertise,” blurbed ATX music journalism matriarch Margaret Moser. A mere sprig of 51 then, he’s 72 now and still a four-time Grammy winner and Stratocaster whisperer whose 12-LP Jimmie Vaughan Story in 2021 summated his Texan blues mythology.  – Raoul Hernandez

We Don’t Ride Llamas

Four headbanging Gen Z siblings who came to fame in 2021 when Willow Smith whisked them away to open her Life tour, We Don’t Ride Llamas’ “Afro rock” banner encompasses elements of alt, nü metal, hard rock, and post-punk. First grabbing attention with anthemic battle cry “The Flies,” the Austinites followed up with 2022 EP The Oracle, containing a springy, Nineties R&B-influenced single. “Venus & Mars” rides the buoyant vocalizations of lead singer Max Mitchell into a noise guitar crescendo from eldest sib Chase. Still, WDRL’s calling card is their live show – joyous and heavy, blasting with personality, and stomping with shiny black boots.  – Kevin Curtin

d4vd

In a year, Houston gamer David Burke (aka d4vd) has ascended from self-produced one-hit wonder to rising alt-pop royalty. The 18-year-old singer surfaced last November with the Rex Orange County-reminiscent, iPhone-recorded single “Here With Me.” The young rocker’s viral stardom (ranked No. 174 in the world on Spotify) quickly culminated in an Interscope Records debut. On Petals to Thorns, d4vd crafts familiar stories of heartbreak scored by R&B/indie rock experimentation and his melancholic tenor. His growing catalog brims with stadium-ready numbers, including the deceptively danceable “Worthless” and Aughts-kissed “You and I.” No wonder he’s opening for SZA this fall.  – Kriss Conklin

Blakchyl

A perfect map of Eastside native Blakchyl’s locally rooted, roving, and relentless creative output, a three-day September celebration of a new short film hopped between her go-to recording studio Elevate Network down south, newly DIY-ing food truck hub Cimarrón off East MLK, and an Airport Boulevard smoke shop. The screenings accompanied new album Better Than I Imagined, titled to recap fruitful collaboration with producer The Mask (sonically previewed on the more bubbly, carefree outlook of June EP Call Me Sometimes). Regardless of setting, the flourishing rapper’s deeply intentional and addictively understated sentiments always carry through.  – Rachel Rascoe

Nemegata

In June 2020, one month before ACL Fest canceled the annual music bacchanal for the first time in its now 21-year-old legacy, Nemegata released full-length bow Hycha Wy. Blistering amplified, electrified, shamanized South American folkloric roots possession, the debut wagged a long tail of festival ascendance that year that was ultimately canceled with the rest of humanity’s plans. Even more powerful follow-up Voces dropped this September, in time to rebuild a fest itinerary that begins here and extends well into next year for the Austin-born Colombian power trio. Hear it at a gathering known for celebrating Latinx from Resorte to Rosalía.  – Raoul Hernandez

Rattlesnake Milk

Across their first two albums, ATX quartet Rattlesnake Milk spun out a dust-blown highway blur of ominous cowpunk ballads, racing through Southwestern soundtracks like Morricone infused with meth. Third LP, last year’s Chicken Fried Snake, mellowed into bluesy stoner jams, wandering in a hallucinatory, reverb-drenched desert – “Looking for a Halo” in visions of a “Holy Ghost.” The band’s lonesome panhandle roots linger in the understated high-plains howl of Lou Lewis and hypnotically bending guitar of Andrew Chavez, spinning an intoxicating oasis for lost souls and restless spirits.  – Doug Freeman

Kathryn Legendre

Kathryn Legendre’s 2013 debut LP, Old Soul, proved aptly titled as the Austin songwriter cut her honky-tonk teeth with sweet-and-sour ballads. In the intervening decade, Legendre has added a harder country punch to her sound behind the EPs Don’t Give a Damn and Making It Up, both twanged out for the dance floor. An upcoming sophomore platter furthers the evolution with new singles showcasing her ability to swing a hook into Nineties country superstar territory with the Jo Dee Messina-worthy “Waiting in Line” and the gorgeously swaying, wallowing “One Long Sad Song.”  – Doug Freeman

Quin NFN

Austin’s most-streamed rapper finally performs at the city’s biggest music event. This moment should’ve happened a while back, as the music video for the no-nonsense 78724 representative’s explosive breakout “Talkin’ My Shit” turns 5 next month. The 22-year-old trap artist has hovered around 1 million monthly Spotify listeners for years despite a downturn in output during the pandemic. Now releasing independently via EMPIRE Distribution, he ended his two-year-plus drought by dropping the collaborative project 2’s & 4’s with Dallas MC Lil 2z last December. Balanced solo album Never on Time followed in March.  – Derek Udensi

Caramelo Haze

ATX’s Latin music scene isn’t quite approaching critical mass, but it did already birth its own supergroup. Grupo Fantasma/Brownout/Money Chicha pair Beto Martinez and John Speice, with Nemegata’s Víctor-Andrés Cruz and Latin music folklorist Alex Chávez, sizzled and swayed on last summer‘s first LP NOESTÁSAQUI, “a psychedelic roots haze” according to this same periodical. At its local album release in January at 3ten ACL Live, the homegrown rhythm machine put on a sexy, swinging, sold-out pachanga fit for a South American stadium yet shoehorned into a bar. A second offering remains in the works.
  – Raoul Hernandez

The Mars Volta

To call the Mars Volta an enigma is a massive understatement. Following the split of their first group, At the Drive-In, in 2001, fans were hopeful that vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala and guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López’s new project would tap into similarly rhythmic-heavy chaos. Instead the Mars Volta arrived with dense, skyscraping prog rock structures flecked with elements of salsa music on singles like “L’Via L’Viaquez.” Last year, their subtly funky and Caribbean-influenced self-titled record was followed with a folkier, acoustic reimagining of those 14 tracks titled Que Dios te Maldiga Mi Corazón. The El Paso outfit’s ACL appearance marks their only Lone Star stop on a continually expanding national tour.
  – Nayeli Portillo

Die Spitz

In a January Chronicle profile, Die Spitz guitarist Ava Schrobilgen cited playing ACL as a major bucket list item for the young band, voicing their wish to freak out their former high school classmates. Making good on the intention, the Austin natives will deliver their dizzying punk-adjacent thrash to Zilker’s noontime crowd before embarking on tour with Aussie punks Amyl & the Sniffers. Recent release Teeth stands as one of the year’s most exhilarating local rock records: From hair-raising grunge guitarwork on “Hair of Dog” to the pure metal maelstrom of “Grip,” the fourpiece wields an ear for in-your-face melodies that far surpasses their collegiate years.  – Genevieve Wood

BigXthaPlug

After performing at SXSW this year, the Pleasant Grove native returned to town in August for a sold-out Antone’s date. The 25-year-old’s knife-edge baritone – coupled with a charismatic, confident delivery – helps individualize his stories of overcoming the odds. Beginning with “Strange Fruit” in 2021, the Dallas rhymer started to heavily incorporate R&B/soul samples into his music. “Primetime” off 2023 studio album AMAR presents BigX at his best: A brassy sample meanders while he turns his weight into an automotive boast (“Might just go buy a Lamb’/ I can’t fit in a ‘Vette“) and celebrates his “unannounced” sudden rise.
  – Derek Udensi

Texas Heat: Lone Star Artists to See at ACL Fest

This article appears in October 13 • 2023 and October 6 • 2023.