Day Friend
Friday 8, Knomad Bar
Blake Griffin self-describes Day Friend as “apocapunkadelia.” He’s got plenty of end times to pull from. July single “Blackout” poured out in the aftermath of 2021’s Winter Storm Uri; written as if he were in “an alternate timeline where the lights never came back on,” the track builds from a sleazy, scratchy riff to a sprightly doomsday outro as the vocalist repeats, “there’s nowhere to run.” Fresh follow-up “Parasitic Grifter Scum” sharpens up with a metallic, Josh Homme-style guitar tone – perfect for a lashing toward the track’s post-election subjects. The local quartet releases the single at this free show alongside Lavender Scare and Friday Boys. – Carys Anderson
Barroom Blitz: Music and Mayhem
Friday 8, Hotel Vegas
This touring concoction promises a mix of bar fights, pro wrestling, and punk/metal, which sounds like any given evening at, say, Lovejoys around 2003. Wrestlers include Santa Chiva, Casanova Valentine, Joe Dred, and the Hardcore Hillbilly. Music comes from Austin’s Starving Wolves, whose anthemic street punk is perfect for pumping your fist while the guy next to you takes a knuckle sandwich to the teeth. Mayhem is promised and could even be delivered. Beware of that one person in the pit who really needs to let off some steam after a long week. – Joe Gross
Rose Fest
Friday 8, Haute Spot
In 2018, Casey McPherson walked away from his prominent rock outfit Alpha Rev to find treatment for his daughter Rose’s rare disease. With a team of scientists and new genetic technologies, he’s found a successful regimen, and now his To Cure a Rose Foundation is helping other families do the same. This year’s annual Rose Fest, to raise money for the nonprofit, features a special acoustic duo set from Plain White T’s frontmen Tom Higgenson and Tim Lopez, the angst and joyful tension of Austin’s Quiet Company, and a reunion of Alpha Rev, back to rock for Rose. – Doug Freeman
Black Art AirWays
Saturday 9, Distribution Hall
This Black Business Month, local arts alliance OFCOLOR takes its annual Black Art WKND to the skies. Curated by the nonprofit’s founder and board chair Rudi Dizer, secretary Steven Hatchett, and creative director Chris Tobar Rodriguez, the reimagined event transforms Distribution Hall into an improved version of Austin-Bergstrom – one with a duty-free market full of Black entrepreneurs, in-flight entertainment headlined by Texan crooner David Michael Wyatt, and a gallery cabin adorned by local visual artists. The activation soft-launches two days earlier with an all-day co-working space/networking happy hour at the Downtown Austin Alliance’s 506 Congress headquarters. – Carys Anderson
BRISKETFEST 2025
Saturday 9, The Far Out Lounge
What do Austinites love more than live music and smoked meat? Literally nothing. Enter BRISKETFEST, helmed by – of course – local pop-punk cover band Jimmy Eat Brisket. Those Aughts-loving musicians perform down South alongside Ne’er-Do-Well, Chancla Fight Club, Dan Radin, Tela Bella, Tanner Bransom, and Wrestle With Jimmy (indeed a Weezer cover band). To up the pop culture-loving fun, vendors All That Raaz, the Emo Alien, the Luxe Art Agency, and Retroplug pop up with retro stickers, artwork, and collectibles. Brisket arrives via SLAB BBQ, Ed’s Smokehouse, and Good BBQ Company. – Carys Anderson
villagerrr
Saturday 9, Mohawk
“I heard you were looking for your signature sound,” singer-songwriter Mark Scott croons in “Car Heart,” a slowcore condemnation of the all-too-familiar wannabe-cool character on 2024’s Tear Your Heart Out. Scott seems to have found his own signature sound – and a copyrightable name – in villagerrr. Sepia-toned vocals and pedal steel licks make room for occasional banjo melodies and drum machine loops in Scott’s distinct Midwestern-emo-meets-Southern-grunge landscape. Supported by Brody Price, Texas’ own darling of Western-style alternative, and Skirts’ artful bedroom indie rock, villagerrr’s pedal board will be in welcome company. – Caroline Drew
Horsegirl
Saturday 9, Parish
Sometimes the smartest songwriting comes from not much writing at all. Sparse and sensitive, Horsegirl embodies brevity on their recent album, Phonetics On and On, ditching the full-length lines for childlike, non-lexical vocables and spacious pop arrangements to match. Since starting the band as a high school extracurricular in Chicago, Gigi Reece, Penelope Lowenstein, and Nora Cheng have left behind the overused Nineties alt-rock references of their recent past to reach for something even further back: their childhood, along with the unfeigned language that once naturally came with it. You can hear all about it in our online-only interview with Horsegirl, and at Parish this Saturday with Godcaster opening. – Levi Langley
RuPaul (DJ Set)
Saturday 9, The Concourse Project
Supermodel of the World, Mama Ru, Queen of Drag – the titles are many for media multihyphenate RuPaul Charles. The Drag Race host certainly loves her side quests, ranging in coolness from an iconic cameo in cult lesbo flick But I’m a Cheerleader (very cool) to rumors of fracking at her Wyoming ranch (not so cool). Queens contain multitudes! In any case, her one-off stop at the cavernous Concourse Project is sure to lift spirits. Given Charles’ penchant for the divas of her young adulthood, expect a healthy dose of soul and disco – think Luther Vandross, Diana Ross, and the Bee Gees. – Genevieve Wood
Project Pat
Saturday 9, Mohawk
Where does one even start with North Memphis hip-hop legend Project Pat? His husky flow and exaggerated vocal inflections first debuted nationally with 1999’s Ghetty Green. Still, it was his magic feature on the hook of 2000’s “Sippin’ on Some Syrup,” a signature Three 6 Mafia smash, that pulled Pat into the zeitgeist. His gold-selling second studio album, 2001’s Mista Don’t Play: Everythangs Workin, featured “Chickenhead” and “Don’t Save Her,” which somehow simultaneously became hood club and vanilla frat party classics. More recent years have seen him featured on tracks with 21 Savage, Denzel Curry, and Drake. – Kahron Spearman
Macy Gray
Sunday 10, Paramount Theatre
This tour celebrates 25 years of Gray’s On How Life Is album, a genuinely distinctive slice of R&B whose smash single, “I Try,” was impossible to avoid around the turn of the century. It sold many millions of albums and then the pop public moved on. And then a funny thing happened: She started making really interesting records that toed the line between jazz and R&B, edging over into the former, and took full advantage of her singular voice. And that instrument is still a wonder. – Joe Gross
Texas Grindcore Obliteration Compilation Release
Sunday 10, Mohawk
Given wasp and hornet season, Doom Records swarms Mohawk at exactly the right moment. The Austin-area imprint unveils compilation Texas Grindcore Obliteration at this all-ages, 3pm matinee. If extreme metal’s lobotomizing spasm of Cuisinart beats, fusillade riffs, and micro run times remains staunchly underground, here’s a prime opportunity to bone up on rising Lone Star purveyors. Dallas grindcore foursome Trucido unleashes protean frontman Alejandro Ramirez, who traffics in infrasound, the lowest tones audible in our earholes, while ATX combo Imminent End sounds like the Great War gone grindcore, as if Bolt Thrower and Sabaton threw over trad metal for Doom Records. Locals in power violence crew Swiss and Deprivation pile on too. – Raoul Hernandez
Glenn Rexach: The Music of Jeff Beck
Tuesday 12, Monks Jazz
Despite many killer players, jazz-rock fusion is in short supply ’round these parts. Too bad, as we have one of its most adept practitioners in guitarist Glenn Rexach, whose CD PanaRican is a charged, melodic marvel. No surprise, then, that Rexach is a Jeff Beck fan. Coming to fusion from rock instead of jazz, the British legend’s run of Seventies and Eighties records – namely trilogy Blow by Blow, Wired, and There & Back – remains a distinctively greasy contribution to the canon. If there’s anyone in town who can call up that spirit, it’s Rexach, whose nimble skill and fiery attack echo Beck’s brilliance. – Michael Toland
Summer Stories: Critter City
Tuesday 12, KMFA
KMFA concludes its summer Midday Music Series with another free event for the kiddos, this time starring the Cover to Cover wind ensemble, a clever quintet formed in 2022 by musicians at UT’s Butler School of Music. Designed to get kids excited about classical music, this whimsical and interactive concert celebrates local wildlife with stories and song. The young audience shapes the story in this choose-your-own-adventure for Betty Bat and her forest friends, and it’s all free, down to the cookies and refreshments provided by Frost Bank. Get a little culture in before school starts, why don’t ya? – Kat McNevins
Almost Famous: A Soundtrack Party
Thursday 14, Hotel Vegas
It’s all happening! Your favorite tracks from the silver screen are taking center stage at the Nothing Song’s soundtrack party. Pop powerhouse Mean Jolene is set to tackle Josie and the Pussycats’ alternative bubblegum beats – subliminal messages not included. S.L. Houser brings her artful bright melodies to Garden State’s indie-infused soundscape. Wanna dance? Wanna win? Psychedelic funk bunch Killer Kaya have you covered with Pulp Fiction’s retro rock melting pot. Cosmic prog rockers Nolan Potter’s Nightmare Band will close the night kicking the classic guitar-fueled tunes of Easy Rider into full gear. – Miranda Garza
Music Notes
by Derek Udensi
The Drop-In
Thursday 7, Long Center Lawn
France in June, Hot Summer Nights a couple weeks ago, and Blues on the Green earlier this week – Blakchyl’s on a scorcher. Here’s another opportunity to catch the effortlessly smooth rhymer as she supports Geto Gala for a free night of top-tier Austin rap.
d4vd
Saturday 9, Stubb’s
After previous performances at ACL Fest 2023 and Emo’s last year, d4vd (“Romantic Homicide”) returns to town in support of debut album WITHERED. The 20-year-old juxtaposes mellow indie-pop and alt-R&B with the full range of emotions associated with youthful lovesickness on his maiden full-length. His new single, “L.O.V.E.U,” precedes a forthcoming deluxe version of WITHERED. Bryant Barnes opens.
Jon Wolfe & Friends
Sunday 10, Gruene Hall
Country singer Jon Wolfe leads an acoustic song swap benefiting Kerr County Flood Relief and Travis County CARES. Performers joining him include William Beckmann, Radney Foster, and Kelly Willis.
MSPAINT
Thursday 14, 29th Street Ballroom
These Mississippi rockers offer a 15-minute blitz of captivating songwriting and synth-punk on their latest EP, No Separation. Highlight “Wildfire” poses an interesting question: “If this world is falling apart, why don’t we just fall together?”
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 August 8 • 2025.
