10 International Acts to Watch at SXSW 2012

For a myriad of reasons, Latin and South American indie bands pretty much never seem to tour North America. The only time they ever make it higher than Mexico is, of course, to play at SXSW; giving festival attendees —be they from North America or anywhere else in the world— a chance to see performers who rarely perform in English-speaking countries. Alex Anwandter hails from the same Santiago indie scene as Javiera Mena, Fakuta, Dënver, and Gepe, and rarely plays shows outside of Chile. The former leader of indie-rock outfit Teleradio Donoso and synth-pop project Odisea released his first 'solo' LP, Rebeldes, in 2011. The set confirmed his legit pop talents, and his gigs at SXSW will be, gladly, the work of a true showman.

Futura Vía, the excellent debut album for Monterrey, México outfit Bam Bam, was hugely hailed in their homeland, but for reasons unknown to me, failed to attract much attention North of the border; leading it to a place on my list o' th' best under-the-radar albums of 2011. The quartet make sprawling, psychedelic, wide-screen jams, taking the obvious influence of Animal Collective and pushing into to profound places. Live, they Bam Bam bash things out with that giddy, all-inclusive joyousness that invites listeners in. Crossing the border from their hometown to Austin —a mere 350 mile journey— Bam Bam could, if SXSW fate takes its course, be looking at another kind of crossover.

Like their pals in Yuck, London trio Fanzine are in thrall to the Classic Indie-Rock of American colleges circa 1991. Naming themselves after the photocopied organs of underground revolt that flourished in the early-'90s (and, comically, selling their own Fanzine fanzine at shows), Fanzine are a nostalgia act plain and simple; alt-rock revivalists who wear their love of Dinosaur Jr., Pavement, Archers of Loaf et al on their flannel sleeves. As with Yuck, there's a limit to how much you can love something so retro-minded, but there's enough melodic tunefulness and mournful sadness amidst the fuzz to bless Fanzine with some mild buzz; and hype-chasin' Fat Possum Records recently issued their first proper seven-inch.

Elizabeth Walling —the 31-year-old, Brighton-based dame who records as Gazelle Twin— follows obviously in the Kate Bush/Björk/Fever Ray/Planningtorock lineage of intellectual, theatrical female performers. The debut Gazelle Twin album, 2011's The Entire City, hews closer to the Fever Ray end of the spectrum of sound; all distorted synths, pitch-shifted vocals, and powdered Gothic pallor. Yet there's the obvious influence beyond the immediate: canonical and classical music, the cinema grotesque of Lynch/Cronenberg/etc, and the meta-provocations of performance art. Live, this manifests in elaborate costumes, masks, video, etc; Walling showing complete disinterest in the usual stand-and-deliver presentation of indie-rock.

Il Abanico formed at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and may or may not be based, these days, in Brooklyn. But the band's founding duo —Juliana Ronderos and Nicolás Losada— are both Colombian, and their debut EP, Crossing Colors (available for free on Bandcamp), is casually bilingual. Il Abanico play complex indie-pop steeped in Stereolab and Dirty Projectors, with hectic polyrhythms rollicking under Ronderos' pretty singing. On "Solo," they even recall one of South America's most successful indie exports, Juana Molina; with cascading patterns piling up in something bordering on cacophony. So, even if they've spent plenty of time in the US, Il Abanico sure sound musically International.

On their early records, English outfit Jonquil played pretty indie-folk, with the specter of Saint Sufjan lingering over their rattling acoustic numbers and sumptuous orchestral ballads, both. But, as frontman Hugo Manuel has spent more time rolling solo as Chad Valley —playing a brand of gaseous electro-balladry I recommended at CMJ— Jonquil have, in turn, grown less folkie. Their freshly-pressed fifth record (but only second LP 'proper'), Point of Go, draws influence from '80s power-balladry, early-'90s house-pop and R&B, acid house's summer of love, etc; giving their soft-hearted, sentimental songs an exaggerated, unnatural sheen which contrasts with Manuel's achingly-human singing. Live, they'll sound unironically epic.

On an International bands list largely lacking in foreign tongues, Las Kellies more than make up for it. On their third LP, Kellies the Buenos Aires trio sing in no less than seven languages: English, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, French, German, and Japanese. However, if that makes them sound like some giddy global travelers, tripping through ethnomusicological genres at a whim, it's misleading. The first time I spun Kellies I was taken with just how much Las Kellies were influenced by New York disco-punk originators ESG; and that was before the band broke out into a reverent cover of ESG's eternal classic "Erase You." On stage, you'd expect their funky grrrl-group racket to be suitably shambolic.

For those who've been following Niki and the Dove's impressive run of early singles, the arrival of their debut, self-titled album in May will have a slight tinge of anti-climax: it's basically all those compiled onto one record. But for all those who've somehow missed the mystical magic stirred up by Stockholm's Malin Dahlström and Gustaf Karlö, the Niki and the Dove LP will be the perfect place to start. The duo make music that courts the dancefloor —see the "Under the Bridges"/"DJ, Ease My Mind" 12-inch— with theatrical flourish; Dahlström's huge voice straddling pagan-ritual percussion, sun-dappled steel-pans, and half-crumbling synth sounds. Yet, even at their grandest, there's a melancholy sadness forever lingering in every Niki and the Dove note.

Mysterious English duo Savaging Spires arrived from out of nowhere —no bio, no background, no PR hype— last year, anonymously issuing a debut, self-titled LP. The pair play a ramshackle woodland racket steeped in the proto-freak-folk of the Tower Recordings, the pagan incantations of Comus, and the eternal specter of the soundtrack to (the original) 1973 head-trip The Wicker Man; with tenuously-in-tune acoustic guitars, junkyard percussion, keyboards, and male/female vocals summoning disturbing portraits of the mystical, magickal darkness dwelling beneath the English pastoral idyll. Since their LP's release, Savaging Spires have been casting these spells live, but they're still yet to tell us their names.

Melburnian indie-pop romantics Twerps will arrive at SXSW fresh off supporting Real Estate on their Australian tour. Like Real Estate, Twerps employ the sweetest of jangling guitars to chronicle lazy summer days and misspent summer nights in suburbia; their 2011 self-titled LP a melancholy study in sad-sounding guitars steeped in the Flying Nun sound. There's added sweetness in the fact that their twin guitarists, Marty Frawley and Julia MacFarlane, are sweethearts; a bunch of Frawley's songs straight-up devotionals sung —in his cracked, wonky, Robert Forster-ish voice— from one side of the stage to the other. Perhaps it's that romanticism that lead them, quite bizarrely, to being name-dropped by Jessica Alba?