Lola Tried
Thursday 30, Chess Club
Lola Tried, who fuse pop and indie rock with noise sensibilities, plan to premiere new single “Degrader” at Thursday’s show. Lauren Burton’s powerful, gritty vocals take center stage in this Austin-based quartet, though guitarist Ray Garza, drummer Jeff Stringer, and bassist Gianni Sarimento craft an equally invigorating atmosphere. With two EPs and an LP under their belts, they’re all set to continue captivating audiences and crafting new sounds with the company of Stella & the Very Messed and Housewarming. – Mattea Gallaway
Her Majesty: A Celebration of Black Women in Music
Friday 31, Antone’s
Austin’s preeminent R&B songstress Taméca Jones – armed with her fantastic 2024 full-length Plants & Pills – headlines a super-stacked lineup for Her Majesty: A Celebration of Black Women in Music. As for the bill’s other songstresses: Alesia Lani preps to drop another smash with upcoming single “What You Want,” featuring New Orleans-bred vocalist Shvkiel, while multihyphenate Queen Deelah brings vocals, bars, and a well-deserved crown. Cherri imbues R&B with a pitch-black nightcore R&B sound, as featured in the spectacular “Dinner Time,” and “Mind Made Up” suggests Maya Sampleton, a former collegiate hooper at Columbia and BLK ODYSSY backup singer, is another star in the making. – Kahron Spearman
A Benefit Show for Families in Palestine
Friday 31, Sunny’s Backyard
DIY booking collective Tiny Sounds’ latest emo-twinged showcase of local talent provides critical relief for three Palestinian families living in Gaza. Self-proclaimed “pastoral sludge” project Virginia Creeper’s melancholic second LP boasts one of this writer’s favorite album titles of all time – People Love the Dallas Cowboys Because They Want to Love Themselves. Fuzzy folk quartet People. Make me. Make things! provide additional head-bobbing distortion, while French Film, Ritual Club, and McBryde round out the bill. A $10 donation is suggested for the all-ages event. – Genevieve Wood
Hans Zimmer Live
Friday 31, Moody Center
Inception, Gladiator, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Dark Knight trilogy, Interstellar, The Lion King – the list goes on, but you get the idea: Hans Zimmer doesn’t just score movies. He defines them. With over 100 films and shows under his belt, Zimmer’s music has become the heartbeat of cinema. Now, Austin gets a front-row seat to the legend himself. Get ready for a night of soaring orchestral magic, pulse-pounding soundtracks, and a maestro who knows how to conjure cinematic images like few can. – Lucciana Choueiry
Nicole Hale Album Release
Friday 31, Chess Club
For her debut album, Some Kind of Longing, Nicole Hale recruits support from a who’s who of Austin’s indie-folk underground, including Thor Harris, Little Mazarn, and Ethan Azarian. They help shade the gorgeously subtle atmospheric touches to Hale’s songwriting, which wraps a warmness around her longing that makes it feel more sentimental than aching. The artist’s pensive phrasing draws each moment out with a calm savoring; her deep winter tunes reflect forward toward the spring with a patient wisdom. Creative whirlwind Bill Baird opens with the experimental flair of his two 2024 albums, Astral Suitcase and Soundtrack. – Doug Freeman
The Peterson Brothers
Saturday 1, Continental Club
By their teen years, guitarist Glenn Jr. and little brother bassist Alex had already grooved at ACL, opened for B.B. King, and wowed Austin regularly with smooth harmonies, tight footwork, and mature internalizations of classic blues, soul, funk, and jazz. Now, with a decade and a half of live torch-bearing to their names, the siblings emerge from the studio still impressively young yet more nuanced and defined. Mixed for surround sound, their 2024 debut LP Experience courts joyful horns, Hendrix-style ruptures, and windy backdrops all while strongly nodding to the music and personal moments delivering the duo thus far. – Amber Williams
KOOP’S 30th Birthday
Saturday 1, Antone’s
Thirty years ago, the Chronicle’s Austin Music Awards declared 91.7FM KOOP Radio – along with its frequency-sharing student station KVRX – the “Best Thing to Happen in Austin,” a remarkable achievement for such a new station. Since then, KOOP Radio has lived up to the title. The community station has brought people together through the airwaves and beyond, embracing inclusivity in both its music and news programming. Shinyribs and Chief Cleopatra perform at this Antone’s-set bash, accompanied by emcees the Double Heads and syndicated columnist Jim Hightower. Here’s to another 30 years. – Mattea Gallaway
Verdi’s Requiem
Saturday 1 – Sunday 2, Long Center
Verdi’s wife described him as a “very doubtful believer,” which may explain why he didn’t feel bound to any traditional ideas about what a funeral mass composition should sound like. Indeed, even if you think you’ve never heard his 90-minute-long requiem before, you’re bound to bolt up in your seat at the thundering second movement, which has popped up in Mad Max: Fury Road, Pig, and Django Unchained. This weekend, soprano Leah Crocetto, mezzo-soprano Daryl Freedman, and tenor Limmie Pulliam make their Austin Opera debut, performing alongside bass Wei Wu, Austin Opera Chorus, and Chorus Austin. – Kimberley Jones
Jo’s 18th Annual Chili Cook-Off
Sunday 2, Jo’s Coffee South Congress
Beef or beans or both? Chili powder and cumin are a given, but cocoa powder has stealth punch. Everybody’s got an opinion about the perfect chili, and the Jo’s Coffee chili cook-off is the ideal place to air those opinions. But first, you better do your research. Entry is free and gets you access to live music from Jeff Hughes, Chaparral, and the Jo’s House Band, but you’ll want to pay the extra $25 for a tasting wristband. The cause is a good one: Proceeds benefit Free Lunch, dedicated to combating food insecurity in Austin. – Kimberley Jones
Cowboy Bebop LIVE
Monday 3, Paramount Theatre
The opening notes of groundbreaking anime Cowboy Bebop’s surprisingly slick and jazzy theme song immediately alert the viewer, hey! You’re in for something different. And hey! It’s gonna be a great time. The TV show (original flavor; no offense to the gorgeous John Cho, but the Netflix version isn’t invited to this party) is a genre tangle of retro pop space noir. Watching it synced up with live tunes from the Bebop Bounty Big Band is just the cherry on one tank of a sundae. – Cat McCarrey
J.J. Johnson x Kebbi Williams
Tuesday 4, Monks Jazz
With a résumé that includes (deep breath) John Mayer, Gary Clark Jr., Billy White, Aimee Mann, Eric Johnson, and a gazillion others, drummer J.J. Johnson needs no introduction to Austin audiences. Saxophonist Kebbi Williams casts a similarly wide net – her CV features Janelle Monáe, Lionel Richie, John Legend, OutKast, and more. The common meeting point is their membership in the Tedeschi Trucks Band, with whom the artists won Grammys for 2011’s Revelator. With a jam band heart and a chordless jazz set-up, this show should draw on their previous work but sound like none of it. – Michael Toland
Wildfires
Wednesday 5, Hotel Vegas
Wildfires’ latest album, Wildfires (Skateland), dropped in 2021; their last Instagram dispatch dates back to the following year. All the more reason to catch the seemingly defunct quartet jangle their way through an early show alongside alt rockers Fehrenbacher, emerging from a yearlong hiatus of their own. Singer/guitarists Gabriel Baldwin and Johanna Heilman weave spacey harmonies in this shoegaze-indebted headlining act, bolstered on record with interludes pulled from real-life UFO sightings. Matt Fehrenbacher leads his self-titled openers with a heavier edge: 2023 single “Skeletin” snarls a dual axe attack, but a singalong melody holds the track together. – Carys Anderson
TC Superstar, Conner Stephens, and Goldrush
Thursday 6, Feels So Good
Are you one of those people who “listens to everything”? Echoing Austin’s diverse music scene, Feels So Good hosts a night of assorted genres and local acts. Lively troupe TC Superstar are fresh off their “DONT WANT TO LEAVE” fall tour across the Midwest. Their 2023 synth-led release Static Dynamic transports listeners to a funky indie dreamworld. Also on the bill, Texas twang singer-songwriter Conner Stephens ruminates on the relatable yet disheartening life of a “Drifter” on his January release, while Goldrush breathes life into angst-sprinkled, Southern-infused rock on the August single “Same Way Too.” – Catalina Perez
Superfónicos’ Residency Kickoff
Thursday 6, C-Boy’s Heart & Soul
In a town dominated and defined by country & western, blues, and punk – with deep veins of traditional Latino and even jazz – contemporary Latin music didn’t take root until the millennium with Grupo Fantasma. Founding guitarist Beto Martinez produced Superfónicos’ debut full-length last year, connecting the scene‘s firestarter to one of its finest recorded productions. Renaceré bottles this Renaissance like pure Agave from Jalisco. The Colombian septet that took root in our live music capital soars Spanish over brass and Afro-Latin rhythms as if all Latin America could be summed up in a single cumbia. Experience it every Thursday in February on South Congress and shake your zeitgeist. – Raoul Hernandez
Music Notes
by Derek Udensi
Exploded Drawing LXII
Friday 31, dadaLab
The first 2025 edition of Butcher Bear and soundfounder’s electronic music showcase welcomes J Rocc from Los Angeles. Other performers for the event include Hexpartner and Ben Buck – the latter of which releases the new album Trillroy on the same day.
Skyzoo
Sunday 2, Empire Garage
Though show postponements usually aren’t ideal, this rescheduled date for Talib Kweli’s planned December 2024 visit to Empire allows adept Brooklyn rhymer Skyzoo to join Landon Wordswell and local artist SHXWNFRESH as a supporting act.
Pink Sweat$
Sunday 2, Paramount Theatre
The pink sweatpants-loving Philadelphian brings his batch of R&B to Austin for the first time since a late 2021 show at Emo’s.
Justin Timberlake
Monday 3, Moody Center
If you missed the man largely responsible for soundtracking DreamWorks’ Trolls movie franchise when he visited town last year for a doubleheader – or maybe you’re understandably nostalgic for that era in 2006/2007 when Timbaland and Danja served audio crack en route to pop chart conquest – here’s a third opportunity within a year to catch him bring “SexyBack” to Moody Center. Timberlake released an album titled Everything I Thought It Was last year.
Want to see all of our listings broken down by day? Go to austinchronicle.com/calendar and see what’s happening now or in the coming week.
This article appears in January 31 • 2025.