{"id":211664,"date":"2026-03-19T17:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T17:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/211664\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T17:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T17:10:10","slug":"who-won-sxsw-2026-best-live-acts-at-this-years-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/211664\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Won SXSW 2026? Best Live Acts at This Year’s Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTwo years ago, This Is Lorelei was one of the more talked-about new acts at SXSW 2024<\/a>. The solo project of New York singer-songwriter Nate Amos has gotten a lot bigger since then, to the point that he was a major draw for the day party thrown by Marshall at Mohawk on Monday (say that three times fast), with lines stretching down Red River. Joined by backing musicians Al Nardo and Bailey Wollowitz, Amos played one emotional gem after another. He got big cheers for \u201cDancing in the Club\u201d and \u201cWhere\u2019s Your Love Now,\u201d two songs that feel like they\u2019re on their way to becoming indie standards after being covered by MJ Lenderman and Cameron Winter, respectively. (We named Lenderman\u2019s incredible take on \u201cDancing in the Club\u201d the second-best song of the year<\/a> in 2025.) Amos is about to release a \u201csuper deluxe\u201d version of his 2024 breakthrough album, Box for Buddy, Box for Star<\/a>, featuring even more all-star covers of his music. These days everyone\u2019s singing This Is Lorelei songs, and that included much of the capacity crowd at Mohawk.<\/p>\n

After a brief changeover, Amos returned to the stage to blow people\u2019s minds entirely with his other band, Water From Your Eyes. This show offered a rare chance to see the two projects on the same bill, and while their live incarnations feature similar lineups (Amos, Nardo, and Wollowitz play in both), the energy shifted quickly with WFYE vocalist Rachel Brown joining them up front. They got into heavier, danker tones right away, turning songs like \u201cLife Signs,\u201d \u201cNights in Armor,\u201d and \u201cBuy My Product\u201d into ever-changing prog-rock\/psych-pop mini-epics. When Amos played the show-stopping guitar solo from the title track of their fantastic 2025 album It\u2019s a Beautiful Place<\/a>, it was one of the single coolest moments of the festival. Later, Brown reflected on some of their past visits to Austin: Back then, \u201cWe played nine shows in four days. But now we only played one show on one day \u2014 and it\u2019s here with you.\u201d In a few weeks, Water From Your Eyes will be hitting the road as an opening act for Hayley Williams, giving them a whole new audience to wow. It\u2019s a good year to get into one of these bands, or better yet both. \u2014S.V.L.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two years ago, This Is Lorelei was one of the more talked-about new acts at SXSW 2024. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[82882,132,134,133,30192,30943,80646,80647,79975,81627,2969,2970,82883],"class_list":["post-211664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-alanis-morissette","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-bigxthaplug","tag-ella-langley","tag-fuerza-regida","tag-future-of-music","tag-lola-young","tag-noah-kahan","tag-sxsw","tag-sxsw-2026","tag-water-from-your-eyes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}