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The All Songs Considered SXSW Preview, 2019

By Bob Boilen,
Robin Hilton, Stephen Thompson
Published March 5, 2019 at 5:16 AM EST
Clockwise from upper left: CHAI, Boy Scouts, Moritz Simon Geist, Blushh, Jojo Abot, Odette
Courtesy of the artists
Clockwise from upper left: CHAI, Boy Scouts, Moritz Simon Geist, Blushh, Jojo Abot, Odette

The annual South by Southwest music festival is our personal endurance challenge to discover as many great unknown and often unsigned bands as possible in just one week. To train for the event, Bob Boilen, Stephen Thompson and I listen to more than a thousand songs by bands playing the festival, from all over the world, and try to map out a calendar to see our favorites.

On this edition of All Songs Considered we play some of the standout songs ahead of the 2019 festival, including the Ghanian artist Jojo Abot, garage rock from Blushh, the Japanese pop group CHAI, music made by robots (I'm not making that up) and much, much more. -- Robin Hilton

This preview show is just a small part of NPR Music's SXSW coverage.

  • Subscribe to the All Songs Considered podcast for in-the-moment exclamations of joy and bleary-eyed, late-night dispatches from the All Songs Considered team.

  • Listen to the Austin 100, a playlist of songs from 100 bands playing the festival.

  • On this page, we'll post concert videos from our first-ever Tiny Desk Family hour, daily discoveries, including a playlist of things to hear as we discover them — and keep an eye on our social media.

  • To get you started: here's All Songs Considered, Bob, Robin and Stephen on Twitter, plus Bob on Instagram, where he posts photos of many of the shows he sees.

  • Lastly, subscribe to the NPR Music newsletter for updates not only about the festival but other features available, including Tiny Desks, interviews and more.

    • Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

    Bob Boilen
    In 1988, a determined Bob Boilen started showing up on NPR's doorstep every day, looking for a way to contribute his skills in music and broadcasting to the network. His persistence paid off, and within a few weeks he was hired, on a temporary basis, to work for All Things Considered. Less than a year later, Boilen was directing the show and continued to do so for the next 18 years.
    See stories by Bob Boilen
    Robin Hilton
    Robin Hilton is a producer and co-host of the popular NPR Music show All Songs Considered.
    See stories by Robin Hilton
    Stephen Thompson
    Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)
    See stories by Stephen Thompson