SXSW Music Spotlight: Indigo De Souza

Indigo De Souza (Photo by Angella Choe)

Among the discourse of ideas that could make the SXSW experience more amicable to artists, I’m having a difficult time imagining the top-down measure that will be able to accommodate Indigo De Souza’s anxiety at Austin crowd crush.

“I get really nervous when there’s lots of people and lots of movement,” laughs the Asheville-based singer-songwriter. “Usually I’m pretty overwhelmed and end up searching for some nature to hang out in.”

In the event that even the Trail at Lady Bird Lake is overrun by crypto bros, De Souza has an expressive escape hatch you and I don’t. At a time when so much indie rock is tethered to Earth by flat, affectless singing, the 25-year-old is gifted with a voice unafraid to wield wild emotionality toward out-of-body liberation.

A destabilizing song cycle structured like a bomb going off in reverse, De Souza’s April-bound masterpiece of a third album, All of This Will End, tightens the blast radius even as it explodes her range of expression like never before.

“My earlier records were born out of angst and pain,” De Souza explains. “This new one is more focused, and in context that feels triumphant to me no matter where it actually goes emotionally. It came from an incredible clarity that I’d never had before.”

Still, should that newfound lucidity fall prey to all the teeming human activity, forcing De Souza to flee the stage, you can count on her to make the date for at least one showcase.

“Ooh, Central Presbyterian! I love playing in churches,” exclaims the artist as she reads through her seven planned gigs, official and not. “It might be because, right now, in North Carolina, I’m actually living in a church.”

Wed 15, 11pm, Central Presbyterian
Thu 16, 3pm, Mohawk
Thu 16, 1am, Mohawk
Fri 17, 12:05am, Half Step