From Boston to Austin: Acts head to SXSW

If it's March and you're a musician or music fan, this time of year typically means one thing: the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference and Festival, or SXSW, held annually on more than 80 stages around Austin, Texas. By our count, roughly two-dozen bands and solo artists from the New England region are headed to this year's 23d annual event (March 18-22) to be around as much music, beer, and barbecue as humanly possible.

If you're going, you'll no doubt run into a few familiar names from around these parts: neo-soul shouter Eli "Paperboy" Reed, hazy pop daydreamers Wheat, cabaret-punk darling Amanda Palmer, roots rockers Sarah Borges & the Broken Singles, hard-rock stoners Dinosaur Jr., Irish punks the Street Dogs, and garage ravers Muck & the Mires, among others.

A handful of terrific up-and-comers are also headed to Austin, hoping to turn some heads. They've turned ours already, and in that spirit, we've picked a half-dozen of the most promising acts you'd be wise to check out when you get there. And don't worry, dude. There'll be plenty of time left over for beer and barbecue.

On their new EP, "The Motorist," the Cambridge-based duo of Max Lewis (programming, keyboards) and Mirza Ramic (bass, keyboards) - along with visuals artist Dado Ramadani - have refined an approach to ambient electronic music that was preternaturally lovely to begin with. Instead of chilly, brittle soundscapes that can constrain electronica, Arms & Sleepers suffuse their mostly instrumental melodies with warm flushes of brass, ethereal vocals (when voices materialize), brushed drums, and artful dollops of plaintive piano. The result is an aural universe as wistful and heartrendingly human as it is electronic. March 20 and 21 at the Parish Downstairs (214 East 6th St.)

Chances are your album's going to sound pretty good if it's coproduced and mixed by a Grammy Award winner (Malcolm Burn) who's worked with Peter Gabriel and Emmylou Harris. The tricky part, however, is being talented enough to get a guy like that to work with you. Good thing, then, that this sextet from Boston is. Both on "I Am Your Bastard Wings," its adventurous debut album, and in a live setting, Eksi Ekso utilizes everything from flugelhorn to trumpet to viola to oboe to create a sound that is far greater than the sum of its parts. March 20 at Wave (408 East 6th St.)

This darkly cinematic Boston post-rock foursome broods and blasts with the best of them. It also must be the only outfit on MySpace to list its primary influence as Immanuel Velikovsky, a Russian scholar whose controversial reinterpretations of ancient history made him a pariah among the science academy. But hey, if rock 'n' roll is - or at least once was - about rebellion, Junius has chosen its inspiration well. Velikovsky's most famous book was "Worlds in Collision," and that's exactly what Junius sounds like - that and "Disintegration"-era Cure tossed into a Mogwai maelstrom. March 19 at the Ale House (310 East 6th St.)

OK, so it's got two drummers, but Magic Magic doesn't need a gimmick: It's already got a great band. With an approach laced with trace amounts of the Arcade Fire, the Shins, and Of Montreal, this Boston quintet has emerged as one of the most promising acts on the local indie-pop scene. The band's new self-titled debut album is chock full of the goodness Magic Magic has become known for: crafty hooks, melodies as fluffy as cotton candy, and intrepid arrangements that keep the listener guessing what surprise lies around the next corner. Kinda like magic, no? March 18 at Spiro's (615 Red River St.)

If sharp, punk-tweaked pop is your thing, put Pretty & Nice on your to-do list. This vivacious Boston-by-way-of-Burlington, Vt., trio has a penchant for putting giddy girls on its album covers and even giddier music inside what the old-timers used to call grooves. But these are kinetic guitar grooves - so tight and springy you could bounce a quarter off 'em - and they're the order of the day on "Get Young," the band's new album on the new Sub Pop label imprint Hardly Art. The members of P&N sound as if they're all hopped up on a diet of pop rocks, high fructose carbonated beverages, and British New Wavers like XTC, English Beat, and Squeeze. An ecstatic racket, indeed. March 19 at Radio Room (508 East 6th St.)

What do you get when you cross a veteran local musician with the former owner of the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge? Why, half of the talented Amherst/Northampton outfit Who Shot Hollywood, of course. Bassist Lucas Kendall and drummer Dana Kendall are the sons of ex-Lifeboat/Tacklebox member Greg "Skeggy" Kendall and the Brattle's Connie White and grew up immersed in the Cambridge music and arts community. Despite the fact that all four of the band's members are barely in their teens, they've already shared stages with the likes of Throwing Muses, Mission of Burma, and Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. Though they're still growing into a sound that mixes sweet-tempered power pop with a dash of angular indie-rock, the band members nevertheless show more promise than some musicians twice their age. March 18 at Maggie Mae's Rooftop (323 East 6th St.)

Know about something cool on the local music scene? E-mail Jonathan Perry at roughgems@aol.com.