Magic Nanna sounds like a character out of The Mighty Boosh, but is in fact an Austin beat music project by musician Joshua Shafer. This is some of the more playful beat stuff coming out of ATX right now, and it seems like Magic Nanna is more ’bout the bright sounds and funky electronic fun than many of his darker and more moody contemporaries in the scene. I get visions of technofairies dancing about in an LED-strewn forest when I hear Magic Nanna tracks like the excessively well-named "glitter spank" below. Given that one of Shafer’s other projects is called Wizrds Only and the Magic Nanna Facebook calls his music "electronic voodoooooo," I also get the feeling that the man wouldn’t find my enchantment-tinged description too surprising to hear. That being said, the playful electronic whines and bloops and samples in these tracks are fully rooted in hip-hop production, especially in the drums, of which Magic Nanna has an exceedingly diverse pallette he plays with. Joshua is a figure associated with many of the other major beat-scene players in Austin, like Exploded Drawing and Sole Glow Collective, and you can find not only the track below, but also a pretty impressively lengthy database of other Magic Nanna tracks and links to Joshua’s other projects (and that of his talented friends) at his Soundcloud, where he posts often.

Tele Novella was one of our nominees for The Deli Austin Emerging Austin Artist of 2014 poll (full results soon to come, so keep your eyes out), and we realized that we had made the grave oversight of never posting on this dynamic ATX band that’s a bit of a supergroup.

Tele Novella’s roster is made up of parts of the split-up bands Voxtrot and Agent Ribbons, both from Austin and each with its own substantial following, plus keyboardist Sarah La Puerta. Where Agent Ribbons was a band with a lighthearted, gently experimental indiepop sound, and Voxtrot was part of the early 2000s indie-rock-that-gets-dancy scene, Tele Novella is an entirely new sound from these musicians. It’s a moodier, retro-conscious approach to indie pop, and the lyrics tend toward odd, off-kilter storytelling and imagery. If you can imagine music that’s tailor-made for a desert scene in a Tarantino film, you’re not far off much of what Tele Novella does.

Of course, there’s much more to this band, which sometimes gets poppier than that description, but under their always-complex arrangements rides an obvious knowledge and nod to the American past, both musically and otherwise. You can tell just from listening that these are people with large record collections, or who at the least would know their way around one. Taking that level of musical knowledge and producing enjoyable music that takes it into account can be a hard trick to pull off, but Tele Novella is nothing if not thoroughly enjoyable. The instrumentation is fun and full of exciting turns, singer Natalie Ribbons’ voice is gripping and dynamic, the harmonies are tight and interesting, and the overall result is smart and undeniably listenable.

Their debut album is said to be in the works, and Tele Novella is set to play Holy Mountain with The TonTons and Wild Moccasins on February 12.

Well, it doesn’t happen often that a band you’re researchin’ changes names part way through your looking into ’em, but that’s exactly what happened when I started digging into Alta Violet, formerly known as Sweet Shine. But hey, young band, they can still get away with a moniker jump or two.

Alta Violet is Austin psych-indie with some real variety to the few tracks they’ve put out so far. Where I hear Death from Above 1979’s pounding fuzzed-out bass and, interestingly, a bit of a schoolkid rhyming thing (which some other early 2000s bands got into for a bit) in track "Stare at the Sun," and "Emily in the Rain" is just pure 90s alt-rock, "I’ve Seen the World" is a song with its head fully in the 1960s harmonic folk-psych scene. This diversity of sound over three available tracks (preludes to an announced album, according to the info) that each manage to hit the genre target they aim for makes Alta Violet a band to watch out for. If they can make this all work together in a whole album, and maybe keep blending up the different influences they pull from, they could end up being a major local player at Psych Fest next time that thing comes around. Let’s just hope to whatever lung gods are out there that it’s a less dusty stage that Alta Violet sets up on than we got this last year. Goddamn that dust to hell. Check the heaviest available track from Alta Violet below, and get on over to their Soundcloud for the other noises this very new band can make.

We in the posting-about-cool-shit-online business have a term for some objects of our posting attention. That term is "super-ridiculous-slamdunk." Well, okay, yes; I might be the only one using that term (for now). But, finding a killer hip-hop producer out of Austin called The Deli (Twitter//Soundcloud) when you are yourself a music website out of Austin called The Deli, is a superdamnridiculousslamdunk, I think you can agree.

The Deli’s beats are smooth and creamy; they come at you like a room slowly filling with gold champagne, liquid and bright and soaking you up to your head in good feelings. The sampling and switches are clever, and use their influences with aplomb: I especially love the retro lo-fi vocal samples used to provide mood in tracks like "#shareair," which has a kinda 60s TV theme thing goin’ on that gets chopped up nicely into contemporary as fuck hip-hop. The silky jazz instrumentals and what sounds like a sample from a pitched-down, slowed-up Latin track in another new The Deli joint, "1Luv," are the kind-of samples that get me to automatically stop what I’m doing to close my eyes for a sec and start the head-nodding.

Get meta with us today and let us slice you off a couple pounds of The Deli here at The Deli. Here’s a track that’s about as new as new can get (9 hours old, at this posting). This one’s The Deli producing beats for East Coast spitter NA$TY, and we’ve got this track (which is already blowin’ up) all wrapped up and ready for you to take with you out the door. Have a nice one, and come on back in when you’re ready for more. The Deli will get you sorted.

It’s pretty damn easy to do singer-songwriter acoustic stuff badly. When you cut out almost all of the instruments and voices from a potential song, the restricted format you’re left with can lead to all sorts of issues. Not the least of these oft-seen issues with the format are making songs that are too simple, songs that are too confessional without being interesting or songs that feature that annoyingly common tendency for people to “weird up” their voice to stand out.

The Division Men don’t trigger any of these warning bells. In fact, this acoustic pair writes deadly lullabies with just (for the most part) two guitars and their voices, and what comes out is dark music for dark nights. And it’s just good. Their compositions are brooding and manage complexity despite the pared-down format, and the vocal contrast of husband J. Spencer Portillo’s deep baritone with wife Caroline Rippy Portillo’s floating, hyper-airy vocals fits perfectly within the methodical, plodding structures of their instrumentation. It’s lovely night music for night moods, and if I could, I’d suggest walking your neighborhood in the small dark hours while you let it play around in your head. It makes for an evening that’s somber in just the right way, which is not a bad way to describe this duo in general. Get listening.

We last covered Borrisokane over two years ago, and it’s high-damn-time they got another Deli look. Since our review of their 2012 “Disaster Face,” this Austin indie-gone-complex band has only improved what was already an interesting sound.

Borrisokane use the word “orchestrated” to describe their music on their Soundcloud, and the term fits: Borrisokane tracks have many moving parts, all of which give the impression of having been carefully set down exactly where they should be in the song. Somehow the group walks the tightrope that is balanced, busy layering and avoids the easy pitfall of overstuffing, resulting in dense, but highly approachable pop songs. I get echoes of surf-rock and The Evangelicals in here, but then sometimes a Borrisokane track will go quite electroish, or throw in some Swans-like deep droning vocals. What I’m getting at is that Borrisokane shows their influences, but they use them as influences should be, nailing that Jim Jarmusch-endorsed “authentic theft” that takes the source material someplace new.

Another reason to bring these guys up is that they have been slamming through recording track after track in support of a seriously fucking cool idea this past year. It’s called The Versus Project, and it’s basically a series of EPs that features Borrisokane and another band covering one song each from the other’s discography, then recording a new song each. Bands they’ve worked with include Pageantry, Knifight, Young Tongue and Major Major Major, all interesting in their own right. The resulting records are solid, and well worth a listen, so get your ears over to both the Borrisokane page and the page for The Versus Project and feed those things some freshness.

Hip-hop should be as synonymous with Austin as any other genre of music. You might have noticed a bit more of it here at The Deli lately; that’s my fault. Hey there, I’m Trevor Talley, and I’ve taken over as editor of The Deli Austin. While we’re certainly gonna keep pumpin’ out the good rock, folk and whatever else jams this city can create here at the ATX blog, one thing I’m doing as editor is to widen the focus of The Deli a bit and make sure that the good shit of all kinds that’s coming out of the 512 gets its due.

In today’s case, I’d like to kindly direct your e-gaze at Kydd, aka Kydd Jones, a bright comet shootin’ out of the beats and rhymes system in this town. I went back today and found the first piece I did that mentioned Kydd, back when I was working the hip-hop and electronic beat for Red River Noise, and in that review (an RJD2 concert Kydd opened for) I said the man was a "true rapper, with a lazer-accurate flow." Two years later, Kydd has only gotten better. As a producer and a rapper, Kydd has quite obviously been doing work, watchin’ where hip-hop is going and making sure he’s right there with his own twist on it. "Who Are You" is the right question for the world to be asking about Kydd, and the snakelike winding of this slow-burner with trap snares and a stoned melody answers that question. He’s goddamn Kydd Jones, one of the best artists in the ATX. I said back in that 2012 joint for RRN that Kydd could get big in the future, and this could well be that time. Keep your good ear on him, and keep your eye on The Deli for more of what you’ve loved in the past, and a little bit more. — Trevor Talley @defenderdefends

I think there’s a certain type of music fan that misses Weezer and The Violent Femmes and Postal Service. Maybe they dug “Teenage Dirtbag” pretty hard at some point, and they’re frustrated with what happened to the reputation of the acoustic guitar (whether it deserved it or not is another discussion). I could be wrong about their specific influences, but that’s what I hear with Crocodile, a young Austin band that’s at its best when they channel the rock-ier impulses of Weezer et al. with songs like “Somehow.” It’s not a new sound, but it’s done in a tight, dedicated way, and with so many bands with half-realized artistic pretensions out there, a group that just seems to want to write relatable, solid pop rock songs is kinda nice. Crocodile’s chosen sound isn’t one that I as a music fan typically look for, but it’s done with skill and earns its emotional ground. Crocodile is certainly authentic, above all, and that’s worth more than a little. — Trevor Talley @defenderdefends

Our Artist of the Month poll is just about wrapped, and as of this post, the pack leader is an Austin beatmaker that goes by ManoftheDown, also known as Man-of-the-Downtrodden also known as MoTD. Hell let’s be straight, this guy has led the poll from a few minutes after it was dropped until this point. And we have some sick contenders in this list.

There’s not a lot surprising in the fact that people dig ManoftheDown’s sound, a complex production that uses some real nice instrumental samplin’ and slacks not one bit on the melody side of things either. Bass comes in huge, with ManoftheDown creator Eli Good putting his own signature spin on it that makes it feel fresh and fine like good bass should. Few moments are left to just be a plain beat in these tracks; Good’s always tossin’ in something new, messin’ with the mix, doin’ some Aphex Twin style breaks fuckery to play around in your eardrums and lock in the Good Feeling. You’ve heard beat music, and yeah sometimes there’s not a lot to differentiate one guy from the next, even if it’s pretty good shit. ManoftheDown leaves me with none of those doubts or nitpicks. The beats here grip ya, ya start noddin’ your head, and you just ride it all the way down to the last second with a smile. We make good beats here in Austin. ManoftheDown makes some of the best, and there ain’t much that can be said against that. If y’like what you hear here (and if y’dont, an ENT doctor might not be a bad idea), get more over at ManoftheDown’s Soundcloud page or Facebook page, where he’s a fairly frequent poster.

Annabelle Chairlegs‘ music and video for track "Axe Me If I Care" is all dreamed-out California sunsoaked indie pop. Lead wailer Lindsey Mackin’s voice and look are like someone took a hair off Valley Girl-era Bonnie Hayes’ punk/pop head (not, to be clear, pop punk) and did mad music science to spit out a new creature that had Hayes’ gripping vocal abilities, but was a bit more hippy-ish. In fact, if it weren’t for the punklike edge in Mackin’s voice and the pared down drum sound, Annabelle Chairlegs tracks sound nearly straight out of the 60s. Throw that punk twist on it, and drop a little bit of 90s alt rock jangle, and it’s workin’ for me. These guys are raw and rough, but the potential is there for this band to go big places.

Annabelle Chairlegs have an album in the works and are about to get their young asses on the road for a tour that kicks off on January 28 at Cheer Up Charlies downtown with ILEZO, Cucumber & The Suntans, Who & The Fucks. Get there, and get gaudy with these kids.

Grace London has come out on top of our open submissions poll for the Deli Artist of the Year, and while we still have a few rounds to go before the final Austin Artist of the Year is named, we figured it was high time we covered Grace again.

It’s been about a year since we last showcased the singer-songwriter, meaning she’s now 15, and in that one year Grace has only grown more visible and exciting in the local scene. It’s also seen the release of her album Brains, the title of which refers to something London obviously has more of than your typical noggin-full. Lyrics-wise, she’s hitting the pen to paper like a veteran, and vocally you can hear a lot of Jenny Lewis in Grace’s new songs. With a Beck cover on Brains ("Girl Dreams"), that era of 90s/00s indie folk seems like an appropriate touchstone when it comes to the influences on London’s latest work.

The Deli is here to bring you the work of musicians before they blow up, and as a teenager topping lists like our open submissions poll, Grace London is just that. Keep an eye on this space for continuing coverage leading up to our announcement of our Artist of the Year, and in the meantime, check out the newest work from this top contender who is just at the beginning of her career.

Vocal group Keeper is next up in our look at the four artists nominated for Artist of the Month. Keeper is three Austin ladies, and they are undoubtedly leading the way when it comes to local singing talent collaborating with ATX beatmakers. Working from the premise of creating interesting harmonies to complement production by some of our most quality hiphop and electronic music producers like Pagame, Anna Love and Boombaptist, Keeper are giving local tracks stunning local vocals. It’s nice when you can source that shit from the home team, and even nicer when you end up with a quality sound like Keeper’s, which floats somewhere between pop and old R&B, but with a definite awareness of the electronic music vocalists of the past. It’s not hard to imagine that some upcoming track collab between an Austin producer on top of their game and Keeper on theirs will get some major national attention pretty soon. Keep an ear on these guys, and vote for em to the right if you’re so inclined.