Planetary Presents: SXSW 2025 Day Party at Valhalla

Planetary Group is back at SXSW with another day party featuring some of the best new indie music from across the globe. You won't want to miss this, RSVP now:

Listen to all the bands playing our day (and night) parties at Valhalla in this Playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5JXtlumSwGDCp6TrZlU5su?si=0fba0b30441845ce

La Securité

La Sécurité (Montréal/Tiohtià:ke) is a collective whose art punk is equal parts: jumpy beats, off-kilter arrangements and minimalistic melodic hooks. The music is all about living dangerously, perfectly agreeable to being blasted onto dancefloors; while the lyrics share the ethos of the Riot Grrrl movement, and celebrate the autonomization of women, friends (mean and nice) as well as benevolence. These five scattered, yet creatively concerted entities also propose a wide arsenal of D.I.Y. music videos, visuals, screenprints, patented dance moves, etcetera! Debut album Stay Safe! (June 16th, 2023 via Mothland) showcases songs that are empowering, flush with urgency, but also denote a dash of melancholia. Bill Pearis from BrooklynVegan describes the long-player as “an enticing batch of party-friendly jams shouted in sneering Franglais that recall everything from Le Tigre to Neu! to Kleenex/Liliput (also Montreal’s Duchess Says)”. As they gear up for their forthcoming US tour supporting The Go! Team, La Sécurité tease us with a first single via British imprint Bella Union, dancy-topsy-curvy “Detour” (October 22nd, 2024), also available on the other side of the pond via boutique label Mothland (CA/US).

Betty Taylor

Betty Taylor is the friend who holds your hand after your heart's been broken. The band is made up of Sophie Patrick, whose indie hooks and sincere and often tongue in cheek lyrics are complemented by Kayla Smart (AKA Dorah Jacson)'s stunning harmonies and dreamy guitar riffs. Helping to strike this perfect balance between power and charm are Claire Chittick on bass and Katie Ishaque on drums.
From an open mic to a backyard party show 2 years ago, Betty Taylor quickly became Australia's newfound indie companions. In late 2022, they signed with development label Hello Gardener, and their debut single "Stallin'", produced by one of Australia’s most exciting engineers Aidan Hogg (known for G Flip, Holy Holy, Jaguar Jonze), premiered on triple J. It has already accumulated over half a million streams.

Dutch Interior

Time can feel interminable until you meet the right person. When Jack Nugent, Conner Reeves, Shane Barton, Hayden Barton, Davis Stewart, and Noah Kurtz started making music together as Dutch Interior, the lifelong friends living between houses in Los Angeles and Long Beach had been in and out of each other’s lives for the better part of two decades. Beginning as a fluid experiment of songs born in the moment, initial recordings Kindergarten and Blinded By Fame trace an uncanny and distinctive world of their own design. The best relationships come easy, and these live-from-tape sketches were the product of a creative union brought on by already-established trust and familiar insularity. The band’s Fat Possum debut Moneyball examines where they go from here. Indulging in the possibility of conventional fantasy as much as it treads with the unease of an incalculable future, Moneyball considers what it means to have universal desires that can feel as absurd as they are essential: to love, settle down, and aspire to greatness as they teeter on the edge of all the possibilities of what could happen next. While Moneyball is punctuated by uncertainty, at its core it is still tethered to the inherently spiritual relationship the bandmates have not only with each other, but with the world that surrounds them.

Antony Szmierek

For Antony Szmierek, sincerity is everything. “I’m not being ironic, using a persona or wearing a mask, my music is just me expressing myself honestly,” he says. “There’s nowt to hide behind. It’s sincerity on overdrive – a space where people can connect with each other.”

The past few years have been a wild ride for the Manchester-based poet, writer and producer. Cutting his teeth on the Manchester spoken word scene and gaining notoriety for his seamless flow skewering everything from the hardships of contemporary British life to finding the unexpected beauty in the everyday, it was the 2023 release of his single “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Fallacy” that kicked off his meteoric ascent. Set against the backdrop of a pounding kick drum and club-ready synths, Szmierek lets loose a stream of consciousness that lays out his vision of musical vulnerability and communal escapism, saying on the track: “Everything’s ironic now, post-post-punk. Take me away.

Brennan Wedl

Brennan Wedl documents those dizzying years spent in the world of ‘twenty-something.’ Her radically unvarnished accounts detail an expansive universe that interweaves the everyday with scenes that might include catholic church camps, queer awakenings, one-night stands, or collapsed ‘forever’ relationships. The result? An eminently relatable catalog of moments when profound realizations arrive unexpectedly.

While she has been steadily releasing poignant dispatches as a solo artist since 2016, in 2024 she takes a striking step forward with a new series of singles that will be released via K*ll Rock Stars. These recordings capture Wedl at her most unbounded and creatively impulsive; delivering sweetly lilting country one minute, and crashing rock the next, ringing out with jangling brightness at times and introspective in hushed acoustic guitar picking elsewhere.

HONEYGLAZE

South London-based trio Honeyglaze are the latest band to work with Speedy Wunderground, the independent label helmed by Dan Carey that seem to cherry-pick the very best in upcoming bands. Not convinced? The likes of Black Midi, Squid and Black Country, New Road have all had releases on the label, whilst Carey has also worked with Fontaines D.C. amongst others.

WISHY

Wishy is an American indie rock band from Indianapolis, Indiana. The band consists of Kevin Krauter, formerly of the band Hoops, Nina Pitchkites, Conner Host, Mitch Collins, and Dimitri Morris. Krauter and Pitchkites formed the band in 2021. The band released their debut EP in 2023 titled Mana. The band released their second EP of 2023 titled Paradise. On August 16, 2024, Wishy released their debut album Triple Seven, through Winspear. They also announced a tour for late 2024.

KNITTING

What started out as a pandemic hibernation project is now the fully fledged Montreal indie-rock-unit knitting. With evocative storytelling and a dry sense of humour, knitting makes guitar driven and lyrically introspective indie rock evoking the nostalgia of 90s alternative rock bands like Pavement, Pixies and Sonic Youth.

Through precise lyricism, brash guitar solos and whispered vocals, knitting brings to life Dempsey’s experiences as a 20-something transitioning and working to understand themself in Montreal. At once massive and intimate, Some Kind of Heaven is a rock record that you can blast with your friends or listen to alone in your room, when you’re feeling alienated from everything you know — and wondering if anyone else is, too.

Some Kind of Heaven was released September 6, 2024 via Mint Records, spending five weeks at #1 on the Canadian campus radio charts, and earning the band press from Pitchfork, The FADER and Stereogum (Bands To Watch, Best New Artists 2024). knitting has shared the stage with the likes of Cherry Glazerr, Ovlov and Truth Club, and has toured and performed at festivals across North America.

Host or Publisher Planetary Group