New Austin Music You Need To Know – June 2026

June 2026

There is so much good music being made in Austin that it can be hard to keep up. To help you stay on top of it, we’ve pulled together some of the best new releases from local artists. You can hear all of these songs on-air at KUTX 98.9 or online at KUTX.org.

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Where Bill Baird finds inspiration for his project Heavy Meddo feels comically obscured at first. With self-descriptions like “postrock/postpunk/post-using-the-word-post” and “enjoys long walks on the Faust tapes,” among other seemingly disparate muses like the Ventures, tape manipulation, and Olivia Tremor Control’s Dusk at Cubist Castle. For me at least, most of them were not immediately apparent as part of the sonic blueprint for “Hairspiece Horseman,” the first track on their new album Spiritual Stripmall. That is, until they were. 

Olivia Tremor Control’s demented yet melodic reinterpretation of 1960s psychedelic pop is definitely present, as is krautrock’s signature motorik beat, albeit if you can imagine a piston engine on Quaaludes. And, when you think about it, the Ventures are inextricably in the DNA of every band that has explored the sonic depths of an amplified guitar with an effects pedal.

Apart from Britt Daniel’s conspicuous credit, “Hairpiece Horseman” is unassuming at first blush, but is in fact among the most aurally rich psychedelic recordings in recent memory. Each new listen is more interesting and rewarding, especially if you’re a guitar nerd. Grab some headphones. 

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Shearwater is the only Austin band that could include Tasmanian forest ravens and Australia’s Franklin River in their album credits without coming off as widely out of place or pretentious. 

Jonathan Meiburg, Shearwater’s co-founder and songwriter, may be better described as a naturalist who happens to have an extensive and celebrated music career than a musician with a particular interest in ornithology. His highly regarded book/meditation on the caracara, A Most Remarkable Creature, is a testament to that, as is his band’s namesake. Regardless, Meiburg’s greatest gift as a creative is that the distinction between science, nature, and art becomes delightfully blurry when you listen to his work with Okkervil River, Loma, and especially Shearwater. 

If this is the first you’ve heard of Shearwater, I want to reassure you that Meiburg is a consummate musician – and his music does not sound like a weird collection of field recordings, nor is it impenetrably academic. 

You’ll understand the moment you give a listen to “Daydream Unbeliever” from the forthcoming The New World (out July 31st). It evokes a spellbinding sense of interconnectedness with the natural world in a way we may need now more than ever. But it does not conjure scenes of meadow frolicking, because, to be frank, most of nature is not like that, especially since, you know, the industrial revolution and all that. It’s much more akin to the disquiet that arrives, offshore, when you look back and see only the swells of an endless ocean. 

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If the video game Hotline Miami (published by the ATX-based Devolver Digital) were a soviet punk band, it would be DRAKULAS. 

DRAKULUS is the result of a heinous covenant between Savage Lord Mic (Mike Wiebe), Sam Francisco (Rob Merchant) of the legendary ATX punk band Riverboat Gamblers, and Pink Rick (Zach Blair) of Rise Against.The proto-punk-supergroup-art project is inspired by an equally wicked fusion of the occult, the creepy scientists from Christ Marker’s La Jetée (1962), dystopian vaporwave, and the scanlines on a CRT TV. 

What the hell would this sound like, you ask? Chilly synth moods, the raw theatricality, grit, and swagger of The Stooges and MC5, with lyrical descriptions of a cyberpunk underworld. It makes me want to dance to be honest.

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Hovvdy helped me fall in love with Austin music.

A few years after I moved here, their record, Cranberry, was one of the first I received as Music Director at KVRX 91.7FM and I refused to shut up about it for the next few years. It had the slow, lo-fi melancholy of Death Cab For Cutie’s We Have the Facts, and We’re Voting Yes, objectively their greatest record (fight me), and to the delight of every sadboy indie rock fan, was among the first glimmers of the soon-to-be slowcore resurgence. 

Their first single since their expansive 2024 self-titled double LP, “TRY TRY TRY,” is a shockingly up-tempo return to bedroom-sized songwriting and arrangements. More than 10 years in, the self-described pillow-core duo may be a little less sleepy, but they haven’t lost their feel for intoxicating indie pop ennui. I can’t wait for another dose when their new record Big World is released later this summer.

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Devotees of Sun Ra’s cosmic mythology, eternal disciples of the funk, the massive music and visual collective Golden Dawn Arkestra has been a defining member of the Austin Music Experience since 2013, but since frontman Topaz McGarrigle’s encounter last year with the late legendary Ghanaian guitarist Ebo Taylor, Golden Dawn Arkestra’s latest singles have channeled some of the deepest grooves of the collective’s existence. First with the soul-soothing afrobeat-leaning “Somebody’s Out There,” and more recently, the psychedelic disco-funk “Lay Back.” 

It’s the perfect sonic distillation of the ATX summertime nightlife, and after listening to it I feel strangely compelled to adorn a headdress and strut down Congress Ave.

“I was walking down South Congress / Looking for a hang / I saw my crew out smoking / In the neon glow of the midnight heat.”

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Pacific Northwest Twee Pop Mecca K Records still knows how to pick ‘em, recently adding the Austin-based Touch Girl Apple Blossom to the list of bands, such as Built to Spill and Modest Mouse, that can call the label their first home. I will say though, while Touch Girl Apple Blossom has some of the sweetness of K Records founders Beat Happening, they sonically remind me more of bands from K’s Kiwi-contemporary, Flying Nun Records, especially Denise Roughan’s stuff, but with a Texas Americana angle. Man, it’s like the greatest combination ever for fans of cute jangly music.