Today may officially be Halloween, but the artists in the below video prove you can rock your spookiest and most outlandish outfits anywhere, including on the GRAMMY and Latin GRAMMYs red carpet and stage. If you're still in need of a last-minute Halloween costume, this video will provide plenty of inspiration.

In the video you'll spot Lady Gaga's famous golden egg, which she was carried in across the 53rd GRAMMY Awards red carpet, giving birth to a fabulous "Born This Way" performance later that evening. You'll also find Sia rocking one of her iconic giant face-obscuring wigs and Daft Punk and the Blue Man Group (at the 2012 Latin GRAMMYs) just being themselves as they walk the carpet. 

There are so many electric and eccentric looks packed into the one-minute video, so let's review a few more. The chrome and gold versions of the elusive French electronic duo's helmets were the ones they looked sleek in on the carpet at the 56th GRAMMY Awards in 2014. Evidently, being a robot is probably harder than we think, and they later changed into white helmets and suits for their funk-filled performance with Stevie Wonder, Nile Rogers and Pharrell Williams. This dynamic crew later took home Album Of The Year and Best Dance/Electronica Album, among other wins, for Random Access Memories.

Near the end of this video, you'll find Williams donning his infamous sky-high tan hat with a red Adidas track jacket, his GRAMMY look that year. In this reel, you'll also see CeeLo Green being CeeLo, on stage in a Carnival-meets-Knights-at-the-Roundtable ensemble during his performance of "Forget You" at the 53rd GRAMMY Awards, which also featured the Muppets and Gwyneth Paltrow.

The one and only Madonna channels a matador and Marie Antoinette at the 57th GRAMMYs, while Kanye West and Jamie Foxx suit up for the marching band during their performance of Ye's GRAMMY-winning hit "Gold Digger" at the 48th GRAMMY Awards in 2006. You'll also see funk legend Bootsy Collins posing with metal guitar slayer—and KFC bucket wearing—Buckethead, as well as fellow mask-concealing hard rockers Slipknot, who pose with their gramophones for Best Metal Performance in 2006. Finally, it would be sacrilegious on this day to not pay tribute to Nicki Minaj serving up Little Red Riding Hood couture in her 2012 Versace gown, alongside a Pope look-alike.

Happy Halloween!

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When Beyoncé announced her upcoming album, Cowboy Carter, with the drop of two distinctly country tracks, she broke both genre and barriers. Not only did Queen Bey continue to prove she can do just about anything, but she joined a long tradition of country music crossover albums.

Country music is, like all genres, a construct, designed by marketing companies around the advent of widely-disseminated recorded music, to sell albums. But in the roughly 100 intervening years, genre has dictated much about the who and how of music making.

In the racially segregated America of the 1920s, music was no exception. Marketing companies began to distinguish between "race records" (blues, R&B, and gospel) intended for Black audiences and hillbilly music (country and Western), sold to white listeners. The decision still echoes through music genre stereotypes today.

But Black people have always been a part of country music, a message that's gained recognition in recent years — in part because of advocacy work by those like Rhiannon Giddens, who plays banjo and viola on "Texas Hold 'Em," one of two singles Beyoncé released in advance of Cowboy Carter.

And since rigid genre rules' inception, many artists from Lil Nas X to Bruce Springsteen have periodically dabbled in or even crossed over to country music.

In honor of Beyoncé's foray, here are eight times musicians from other genres tried out country music.

Ray Charles — Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music (1962)

In 1962, the soul music pioneer crossed the genre divide to cut a swingin' two-volume, 14-track revue of country and western music.

Part history lesson and part demonstration of Charles' unparalleled musicianship, Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music covers country songs by major country artists of the era, including Hank Williams, Don Gibson, and Eddy Arnold. An instant success, the record topped album sales charts and was Charles' first atop the Billboard Hot 200 charts.

Ringo Starr — Beaucoups of Blues (1970)

The Beatles' drummer loves country music. Ringo Starr cut this album, which sounds like something you'd two-step the night away to at a honky tonk, as his second solo project. He was inspired by pedal steel guitar player and producer Pete Drake, who worked on George Harrison's All Things Must Pass.

With Drake's help, Starr draws out a classic honky tonk sound — pedal steel, country fiddle, and bar room piano — to round out the album.

Beaucoups includes a textbook country heartbreak song, "Fastest Growing Heartache in the West," a bluesy ramblin' man ballad, "$15 Draw," and a surprisingly sweet love song to a sex worker, "Woman Of The Night."

The Pointer Sisters — Fairytale (1974)

Remembered for their R&B hits like "I'm So Excited" and "Jump (For My Love)", the Pointer Sisters dropped "Fairytale," a classic country heartbreak song into the middle of their second studio album, That's A Plenty.

Full of honky tonk pedal steel and fiddle, the track earned the band a GRAMMY award for Country and Western Vocal Performance Group or Duo in 1975, beating out Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Bobby Bare, and the Statler Brothers; they were the first, and to date, only Black women to receive the award.

The same year the song came out, the Pointer Sisters also became the first Black group to play the Grand Ole Opry, arriving to find a group of protesters holding signs with messages like 'Keep country, country!'

Tina Turner — Tina Turns the Country On! (1974)

Also in 1974, Tina Turner cut her first solo album, Tina Turns the Country On!, while she was still performing with then-husband Ike Turner as the Ike & Tina Turner Revue.

Containing the seeds of the powerful, riveting voice she'd fully let loose in her long solo career after separating from her abusive husband, the album presents a stripped down, mellow Turner.

She covers songs like Kris Kristofferson's "Help Me Make It Through The Night" and Bob Dylan's "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You," and delivers a soaring rendition of Dolly Parton's "There Will Always Be Music."

Turner was nominated for a GRAMMY award for the album, but in Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female, category.

The Beastie Boys — Country Mike's Greatest Hits (1999)

This Beastie Boys cut only a few hundred copies (most reports say 300) of this spoof country album — reputedly conceived of as a Christmas present for friends and family, and never officially released.

Presenting the supposed greatest hits of a slightly dodgy, enigmatic character – Country Mike, who shares a name with band member "Mike D" Diamond — the album sounds like vintage steel guitar country. Think Hank Williams and Jimmy Rodgers with a dash of musical oddballs Louden Wainwright III and David Allen Coe's humor and funk.

Country Mike appears just briefly in the liner notes of the band's anthology album, The Sounds of Silence, (which also includes two of the album's tracks: "Railroad Blues" and "Country Mike's Theme"), as part of an alternate universe wherein Mike temporarily lost his memory when he was hit on the head.

"The psychologists told us that if we didn't play along with Mike's fantasy, he could be in grave danger," the notes read. "This song ('Railroad Blues') is one of the many that we made during that tragic period of time."

Cyndi Lauper — Detour (2016)

The "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" singer enjoyed herself thoroughly by deviating from her typical style with 2016's Detour.

Road tripping into country music land, Lauper covered country songs of the 1950s and 1960s, including Marty Robbins' "Begging You," Patsy Montana's "I Want to be a Cowboy's Sweetheart" and Dolly Parton's "Hard Candy Christmas" with guest appearances by Willie Nelson, Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, and Vince Gill.

Jaret Ray Reddick — Just Woke Up (2022)

It might be hard to imagine the Bowling for Soup frontman, known for teenage pop-punk angst hits like "Girl all the Bad Guys Want" and "Punk Rock 101" crooning country ballads.

But in 2022, under the name Jaret Ray Reddick, he cut his solo debut, Just Woke Up. Drawing inspiration from Reddick's native Texas, the steel guitar and twang driven album features duets with Uncle Cracker, Cody Canada, Frank Turner, and Stephen Egerton.

Self-effacing and personable as ever, Reddick heads off questions about the viability of his country music with the album's first track, "Way More Country," acknowledging the questions listeners might have:

"I sing in a punk rock band/ And I know every word to that Eminem song "Stan"/ And I've got about a hundred and ten tattoos / But I'm way more country than you."

Bing Crosby — "Pistol Packin' Mama" (Single, 1943)

Legendary crooner of classic Christmas Carols and American standards, Bing Crosby decided to try his hand at country music with his cover of Al Dexter's "Pistol Packin' Mama," the first country song to appear on Billboard's charts.

The song, which tells the story of a man begging his woman not to shoot him when she discovers him out on the town fooling around, has since also been covered by Willie Nelson, Hoyt Axton, and John Prine.

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The 2024 South By Southwest Festival got off to a dramatic start: approximately 80 artists, speakers, and event sponsors pulled out of the event to protest the sponsorship of the U.S. Army and defense companies and then a hit-and-run traffic incident in a crowded festival area resulted in a fatality and serious injury early Tuesday.

SXSW spokespeople issued statements about both. They were "saddened" by the tragic traffic incident, and reiterated that they are an organization that welcomes diverse viewpoints and therefore saw no issue in allowing the military sponsorships. They also did not criticize anyone who pulled out of the festival to show solidarity with Palestine and protest genocide. Republican Texas Governor Ron Abbott was not as diplomatic.

And yet the music portion of the festival pushed on. 

Some of the bands who pulled out of the festival performed "unofficial" shows, and as with previous SXSW festivals, the diversity of music offerings was staggering: artists played genres such as folk, pop, indie rock, psychedelic cumbia, punk, electronic, and Americana, but also offered regional lenses to musical styles — Texas rap, Southern California soul-jazz  — and social justice viewpoints like indigenous hardcore. Artists also offered global perspectives on jazz, hip hop, and psychedelic funk.

Read on for TK of the most inspiring and exciting moments from SXSW 2024 – from performances by legends to groundbreaking new acts.

The Black Keys Take Audiences Behind The Scenes (And Back To Their Salad Days)

Music keynote offerings felt slim compared to previous years, but festival goers did get an authentic, revealing glimpse into the world of the Black Keys — there to promote a new documentary film about their band history and to perform two shows. 

Drummer Patrick Carney stole the show with humorous, deadpan anecdotes —including that time he slept in the van to guard the $500 they made at a show and woke up in the middle of the night to a crowd of drunk people dressed like Santa Claus in the middle of July — and self-effacing jokes about himself and the group: "The first time we came to SXSW we couldn’t afford to stay in town." 

One thing the film makes clear is that two key elements of the Black Keys are simplicity and technology. They kept things simple by being a two-piece band: a few bass players auditioned early on but Carney and Dan Auerbach preferred the sound of drums and guitar. But the key element was Carney’s four-track recorder: he taught himself how to use it, which enabled the band to record themselves in Carney’s basement and fine-tune their nuanced approach to rock music.

 "We wanted the kick drum to sound like the speakers were blown," Carney said in an interview. 

Carney and guitarist/singer Auerbach later performed a blues-driven sold-out show at Austin’s Mohawk, joined by artists on Auerbach’s Nashville-based record label Easy Eye Sound. There was no banter, just music.

Bootsy Collins Brings The Funk & A Lot Of Flair

Legendary funk bassist, singer, and producer Bootsy Collins — who played with James Brown and Parliament-Funkadelic, boasts a long solo career, and collaborated with artists like Deee-Lite, Fatboy Slim, Silk Sonic,  Kali Uchis and Tyler, the Creator — hosted high-energy shows with the Ohio group Zapp and his entourage of collaborators and proteges at the 2024 festival. 

A long line of people snaked down Austin’s busy Red River Street waiting to get into the packed Mohawk club for a March 15 show, which featured guest artists Henry Invisible, Tony “Young James Brown” Wilson, and FANTAAZMA. A few fans wore big hats and star-shaped sunglasses to emulate Collins’ distinct look.

Collins, who announced in 2019 he wouldn’t play bass in live performance anymore, was in town to promote his anti-violence initiative, "Funk Not Fight," and a new song and album of the same name. He also promoted his Bootzilla Productions company and Funk University, which aims to mentor younger creatives like Hamburg-based FANTAAZMA, who joined Collins for a SXSW Studio interview with TikTok creator Juju Green.

“At some point James Brown saw something in me, you know, and grabbed us in, and I’ll never forget that, and so that’s what I try to do,” Collins said about his efforts to help mentor younger artists. 

Omar Rodríguez-López & Cedric Bixler-Zavala Get Weird

What a journey these two have had: they met as teens in the hardcore scene in El Paso, Texas, formed two influential alternative rock bands — At The Drive-In and The Mars Volta — and one obscure dub project — De Facto — that earned them rock and roll acclaim from the music press and respect from musical peers in bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. 

Omar and Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird, a new documentary about the creative partnership between Rodríguez-López and Bixler-Zavala, premiered  at the 2024 festival. The film illuminates the duo’s struggles with bandmates, addiction, racism, Scientology, and their ups and downs in the music industry. 

Rodríguez-López recorded loads of footage over the years of them on the road, in recording studios, and in live performance. Those intimate, up-close moments used in the film reveal a partnership that begins in solidarity, drifts apart, and comes back together stronger than when they started. It’s essentially a film about friendship.

The two appeared briefly onstage before the film’s screening, alongside director Nicolas Jack Davies, but said nothing. For the first time in 21 years, the two performed at this year’s SXSW festival as De Facto, their lesser-known reggae-influenced side project, to promote the new film.

Cumbia Is The Real Soundtrack To SXSW 2024

Cumbia in 2024 is conscious party music, still closely linked to its Colombian origins but expanded and modernized by elements of psychedelia and the young players from across the country and the world interpreting the genre. 

Cumbia could be heard throughout the festival, in particular at a heavily attended party March 12 at Hotel Vegas in Austin, which featured more than 10 bands on four stages. A few fans could be seen wearing T-shirts with the phrase “Cumbia is the new punk,” the title of a song by Mexican cumbia fusion group Son Rompe Pera. 

Bands mostly from Texas — including the “barrio big band” Bombasta and Latin psych bands like Combo Cósmico and Money Chicha —  and the rock-influenced Denver band Ritmo Cascabel played dance music driven by hand percussion, heavy bass lines and guitars drenched in reverb.

Earlier this year, Billboard predicted that cumbia music in all its entirety and subgenres — chicha, sonidera, norteña, villera — would see a massive growth in 2024, citing higher-profile artist collaborations and social media viral hits.

Classical Music Unveils Its Changing Profile

Classical music is most often associated with beautiful concert halls and polite, well-dressed audiences who sit quietly as music is being played. This was not the case for Vulva Voce, an all-female Manchester-based string quartet that played their unique blend of modern classical music at various SXSW stages this year. 

Band members wore one-piece jumpsuit coveralls with Doc Martin boots and performed mostly original, high-energy, uptempo compositions to loud crowds at dive bars throughout Austin. They shredded strings and swayed and bounced onstage as if it were a rock show, and said they loved every minute of it.  Vulva Voce also performed live with Ash, a Northern Irish rock band whose career in music spans 30 years.

Vulva Voce’s modern approach to classical music comes at a good time. Mid-week, a group of classical music artist managers, lawyers and classical music label executives spoke about classical music’s revival in gaming and soundtracks. 

Traditional classical music performance continues to struggle with attendance, but the genre has gained traction on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, and has seen a surge in interest in film scores, Netflix soundtracks, video games, and sports broadcasts. 

More than 340 new bands played SXSW for the first time this year. Each year, SXSW awards three emerging artists The Grulke Prize, in honor of festival Creative Director Brent Grulke, who passed away in 2012. Sabrina Teitelbaum, who performs as Blondshell, won for developing U.S. act, the South Korean alternative K-pop band Balming Tiger won for developing non-U.S. act, and British psychedelic pop band the Zombies won the career act award

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South By Southwest lures more than 250,000 people to Austin each year to learn about a range of topics, including education, the cannabis industry, technology, film, and video gaming, but music is the heart and driving force of SXSW. The festival kicks off March 8, and a dizzying array of musical performances brings the festival to life from March 11 to 16.

The festival has grown exponentially since its inception in 1987 as a showcase for mostly unknown alternative acts. Roughly 2,000 musical artists will perform on more than 100 stages spread out across Austin and the possibilities for discovery feel endless.

SXSW can generate much buzz and help launch careers: Odd Future, the hip-hop/R&B collective that provided the springboard for Tyler, the Creator and Frank Ocean, played just a few short sets there in 2011, and Diddy declared them the future of rap music. HAIM, Janelle Monáe, John Mayer, M.I.A., and countless others have had significant early-career moments at SXSW. And legacy artists like New Order and RZA also come to the festival each year to share their wisdom in interviews and perform new material.

As the 2024 festival kicks off, check out some of the emerging and legacy artists appearing at SXSW, including a multiple GRAMMY-winning garage duo, an all-female post-punk group from Los Angeles that embraces "nihilism and loneliness," a modern Texas cumbia collective, an '80s light rock icon, a funk pioneer, modern funk innovators, Glasgow '90s post-rock, and more.

The Black Keys

The Black Keys helped usher in the garage rock revival of the early 2000s on just two instruments: drums and guitar. Their stripped-down sound, originally just made up of "old blues rip-offs and words made up on the spot" in Akron, Ohio, eventually grew to become a well-crafted, major-label rock sound that landed them in arenas and earned more than two dozen award nominations and multiple GRAMMY wins. They’ve released 11 studio albums.

The duo will perform at the 2024 festival in support of a new documentary, This Is A Film About The Black Keys, that traces their trajectory from jamming in basements to major-label rock band. Rolling Stone Senior Writer Angie Martoccio will interview members Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney in a keynote event.

Automatic

Since the release of their 2019 debut album, Signal, the gloomy post-punk band Automatic has toured the U.S. and abroad, composed the soundtrack for Hedi Slimane’s 2020 Paris Fashion Week show for Céline, and opened for legendary post-punks Bauhaus ( drummer Lola Dompé is a daughter of the English goth rock band’s drummer Kevin Haskins).

The band’s three members — Dompé, Izzy Glaudini, and Halle Saxon-Gaines — draw inspiration from krautrock, dub reggae, and the off-kilter, moody atmosphere of films by auteurs like David Lynch. Their live performances are uptempo and melancholy at the same time, and have shared stages with Parquet Courts, Tame Impala, and Thee Osees. Automatic  once described their music as "fixated on the intersection between ’70s underground culture and the ’80s mainstream, ‘That fleeting moment when what was once cool quickly turned and became mainstream, all for the sake of consumerism.’"

Mogwai

When the Glasgow-based rock band released their first single in 1996, they were anxious to replace the '90s Britpop of well-known UK bands like Oasis and Blur with something a bit more emotional and dark: lengthy guitar-based instrumental pieces full of distortion and heavy effects that offered dynamic contrast and melodic bass guitar lines. 

They’ve since gone on to embrace electronica and instrumental music, and over the years has provided music for multiple film soundtracks. Their basic song formula typically begins with something low-key that grows into something gentle and melodic, and then pushes toward louder, layered driving rock. 

"Calling it ‘art’ would be a pretentious step too far, but it’s certainly something that feels exciting and different to most other pop," one British newspaper wrote. A new documentary from Antony Crook, If The Stars Had A Sound, which follows the independent Scottish band’s trajectory, will premiere at SXSW 2024. 

El Combo Oscuro

Modern-day interpretations of cumbia — a percussion-heavy genre of Latin American music originated in Colombia — have become more widespread in recent years, with some calling cumbia "the new punk" for a young generation of rockers who are politically engaged but want to have a good time.

On organ, guitars, bass, drums, and conga drums, El Combo Oscuro sounds modern and retro at the same time, by weaving together an "impenetrable wall of psychedelic Cumbia and Latin sounds" that "throws neon Tex-Mex tribalism," according to the Austin Chronicle. 

Almost immediately after forming in 2020 in Austin, El Combo Oscuro were nominated for an Austin Music Awards’ Best Latin Act, and their debut EP, Que Sonido Tan Rico, was No. 15 on the Austin Chronicle’s Top 100 Records of 2021. A second EP, 2022's Cumbia Capital, further showcased the sound of Texas. Their 2024 SXSW performance will also feature songs from their latest release, a 2023 debut full-length titled La Danza de las Sirenas.

Bootsy Collins

In addition to showcasing thousands of emerging acts, SXSW each year also honors legacy artists who continue to write, produce, and perform music. Bassist Bootsy Collins — who played with James Brown and Parliament-Funkadelic throughout the late '60s and '70s and, in recent years, has collaborated with Kali Uchis and Tyler, the Creator — will perform with the group Zapp. 

The performance is part of Bootsy's own anti-violence initiative, "Funk Not Fight," which includes a Cleveland-based (Collins is from Ohio) anti-violence hub designed to offer music recording and mentorship to local youth. During a free performance on March 15, Collins will release a new song and album of the same name. 

Collins’ previous album was 2021’s Nobody’s Perfect Experience. The GRAMMY-winning bassist was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997 with other members of Parliament-Funkadelic. Collins played on some of James Brown’s best-known and most political records – "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine" and "Superbad" – and also had a hand in pop hits like Deee-Lite’s "Groove Is in the Heart" and Fatboy Slim’s "Weapon of Choice."

At 72 years old, Collins shows no signs of giving up the funk. "Funk just brings people together, from the ground up," he told the Guardian. "It doesn’t have nothing to do with color. It has nothing to do with status. It just brings you to ‘the one’, and the one thing that we all have in common is that we all just want to live. That’s what it’s really all about. It’s making something from nothing, like me." 

John Oates

John Oats is one half of five-time GRAMMY-nominated pop-soul duo Hall & Oates. Twenty-nine of their 33 singles charted on Billboard’s Hot 100 between 1974 and 1991, and six of those songs — like "I Can’t Go For That" and "Private Eyes" — peaked at No. 1 . The two were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2014 and their music has been sampled by artists like 2 Chainz.

Oates, 75, has released five studio albums as a solo artist and published a memoir in 2017 titled Change of Seasons.

"I made a move to Nashville in the late '90s, early 2000s. The move, and the musicians and people I surrounded myself with, allowed me to rediscover the musician that I was before I met Daryl Hall," Oates told GRAMMY.com. "Because I was a blues, folk, rootsy musician, and I tapped back into my earliest influences.

At SXSW 2024, Oates will discuss fame, fortune, and managing a hit music career. His talk will be moderated by Alex Heiche, CEO & Founder of Sound Royalties. Coincidentally, Oates has been in the middle of a legal battle with his former songwriting partner. 

Slick Rick

When asked about hip-hop icon Slick Rick, Roots drummer and Tonight Show bandleader Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson told Rolling Stone, "Slick Rick's voice was the most beautiful thing to happen to hip-hop culture. Rick is full of punchlines, wit, melody, cool cadence, confidence and style. He is the blueprint." 

Slick Rick "The Ruler" — largely considered the most sampled hip-hop artist in history — launched his career performing with Doug E. Fresh’s Get Fresh Crew in the mid-80s, and his 1988 breakout solo album reached number one on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop chart. Slick Rick has recently collaborated with Soul Rebels Brass Band. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2023 GRAMMYs, to honor his legacy as a masterful storyteller and pioneering melodic rapper who raps in a British accent with a leisurely cadence and an unforgettably nasal voice that sometimes swerves into cartoony vocal tones. 

In recent years, Slick Rick has collaborated with Missy Elliott, Mos Def, and the Black Eyed Peas. He performed a duet with Mariah Carey at Radio City Music Hall in 2019, and was signed to actor Idris Alba’s record label. He will perform an all-ages showcase performance — badge-required — at The Mohawk on March 12.  

BALTHVS 

Funk music in recent years has taken on a more global sound, incorporating elements of Asian and Middle Eastern music, surf rock, reggae, and cumbia, thanks to bands like Khruangbin and BALTHVS, a Colombian psychedelic funk trio that has toured the world and released three full-length albums since forming in 2019. The band aims to make "cosmic music" that can combat anger and anxiety.

Band members Balthazar Aguirre (guitar), Johanna Mercuriana (bass), and Santiago Lizcano (drums) produce, mix, and master all of their music and design all of their artwork. Their most recently release, Third Vibration, incorporates funk, disco, dream pop, vaporwave, soul, and R&B into their songs.

Aguirre hypes those genres and more on his Cubensis Records YouTube page, where subscribers can better understand the BALTHVS universe by exploring a vast library of eclectic music, like the mystical 1968 Gabor Szabo album "Dreams," or Stefano Torossi’s 1974 Italian jazz fusion album "Feelings." For super fans, it’s a giant rabbit hole of discovery that helps illustrate the band’s musical recipe.

Brainstory

Brainstory is another modern funk outfit with an eclectic musical blueprint: the three members of Brainstory grew up in the Inland Empire area outside Los Angeles, and by the mid-2010s, they were developing a version of California retro soul music that combines jazz and funk with psychedelic rock and 70s R&B. 

"That's what we were all into at the time—jazz," says guitarist and singer Kevin Martin, who happens to be a big Bob Dylan fan. "And that's what we wanted to do with our first EP in 2014—take our songs and expand them, improvise, weld jazz onto them. We wanted to trick people into listening to jazz, basically." 

The band, made up of Kevin, his brother Tony Martin, and Eric Hagstrom, has released one full-length album, an instrumental album, and an EP. Their new record, Sounds Good, produced for Big Crown Records by Leon Michels — who recently collaborated with Black Thought of the Roots — drops on April 19. The band is touring this spring. Previously they’ve performed with soul singer Lady Wray, and singer Claire "Clairo" Cottrill has a guest feature on the new album.

Vulva Voce

SXSW is more associated with rock music than classical, but the UK-based, all-female string quartet Vulva Voce has applied a rock attitude to their ensemble. Formed during Covid lockdown, they compose much of their own music — which combines elements of folk, jazz, contemporary, and experimental music.

"In terms of our identity — and especially in terms of our business model — we treat ourselves like a band rather than a classical string quartet," violist Nadia Eskandari said. 

Vulva Voce also employ a bit of a punk attitude, performing outside classical concert halls, at open mic nights and pop-up performances. They also play a wide range of music written by female composers.

"We want all the music we play to feel accessible to anyone, because when you are playing music by women, it is even more important that anyone can connect to it, not just classical audiences,"  Eskandari adds.

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On the heels of her first GRAMMY wins, Miley Cyrus is feeling good — and she's ready to be your cure.

The pop superstar unveiled her new single, a lustful, funky dance track titled "Doctor (Work It Out)," on March 1. The track is her latest collaboration with Pharrell, and their first in 10 years.

Over a pulsating bass guitar-driven beat, Cyrus opens with the punchy chorus (“I could be your doctor/ And I could be your nurse/ I think I see the problem/ It's only gon' get worse/ A midnight medication/ Just show me where it hurts," she sings) before erupting into a dance break as she declares, "Let me work it out… Imma work it out…”

So far, 2024 is feelin' fine for Cyrus. At the 2024 GRAMMYs, her 2023 smash, "Flowers," took home two awards, for Best Pop Solo Performance and Record Of The Year. Following her first win, she delivered a knockout performance featuring the unforgettable ad lib, "I started to cry and then I remembered I… just won my first GRAMMY!" 

Less than a month later, "Doctor (Work It Out)" serves as another groovy celebration of Cyrus' achievements in life and music so far.

The song's music video is reminiscent of her 2024 GRAMMYs performance, too. Not only is she wearing a similar shimmery fringe dress, but the entire video is a jubilant, blissful solo dance party.

Though Cyrus first teased "Doctor (Work It Out)" just a few days before the song's arrival, Pharrell first gave a sneak peek in January, at his American Western themed Fall/Winter 2024 Louis Vuitton Men's fashion show in Paris. It was Pharrell's third collection for the luxury house, and the bouncy single served as a fitting soundtrack. 

The song marks Cyrus' first release in 2024, and her first collab with Pharrell since 2014's "Come Get It Bae" from his album G I R L'; Pharrell also co-wrote and produced four tracks on the deluxe version of Cyrus' 2013 album, Bangerz.

Watch the "Doctor (Work It Out)" video above, and stay tuned to GRAMMY.com for more Miley Cyrus news.

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