The annual sonic bacchanal known as South by Southwest goes down March 12-16. Every year, several thousand music-biz types, musicians and ordinary mortals with more money than sense descend upon downtown Austin, Texas, cramming five months of musical activity into five days. I'll be blogging about all the awesome and heinous stuff I see/hear while I'm there, but for now, here's a lil' sneak preview of the festivities.

OC/LBC bands making the trek to the Lone Star state's capital include Free the Robots, Willowz, Dusty Rhodes and the River Band, Channel 3, God's Good Soldiers and Rocco Deluca & the Burden. We wish them godspeed, a carton of Airborne each and a guide to all of Austin's vegetarian-friendly restaurants.

Some of the acts I'm stoked to see include Holy Fuck, Fuck Buttons, Wooden Shjips, Monotonix, Mahjongg, Ghislain Poirier, Howling Hex, Mark Stewart & the Maffia, Citay, Lindstrøm, the Homosexuals, Jason Forrest, Arp, Atlas Sound, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Flying Lotus, Darondo, El Michels Affair, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Cadence Weapon, Earthless and many more. I also look forward to stumbling upon unknown bands who will blow my mind and inspire me to impulsively buy their merch. And I wouldn't mind catching the SXSW interview with Ice Cube and DJ Pooh nor Lou Reed's keynote speech, and the panel discussion on the Vinyl Revival (wait, did it ever go away?) promises to be a glorious geekfest.

You can peep the whole enchilada here.

Finally, here's a clip of Israeli madmen Monotonix's, uh, incendiary performance at last year's SXSW. Jews + fire = a damned hot time.