Live music preview: Six acts to see at Austin Psych Fest as it gears up for 2024 with special events and late night shows

LEVITATION’s Austin Psych Fest will return to Far Out Lounge & Stage in 2024, coming with a stacked lineup April 26-28 that features acts from all over the world to commemorate the music festival’s second Spring edition since the return to an annual Springtime, one-location, two-stages, no-overlap festival experience. The 3-day festival will feature indie rock royalty such as Kurt Vile and Courtney Barnett while also featuring LEVITATION mainstays Frankie & The Witch Fingers and festival founders and psych rock powerhouses, The Black Angels. To help audiences prepare for the stacked festival, the team at The Cosmic Clash has curated six bands to watch for the festival during the last weekend of April, including the kickoff and late-night shows occurring around the festival in Austin. All tickets can be purchased via See Tickets on the LEVITATION website here.

Austin Psych Fest 2024 Kickoffs & After Parties

For the second year of Austin Psych Fest’s return to a one-location, two-stager rager format, Levitation will still enact auxiliary locations for kickoff and late-night festivities. For Thursday, April 25, two pre-parties will happen in downtown Austin’s Red River Cultural District, both listed as concurrent events, however, last year’s edition saw a main event with a late-night show following at Jake Garcia of The Black Angels-owned The 13th Floor.

Two kickoff parties will occur at Empire Garage & Control Room featuring Golden Dawn Arkestra, Caramelo Haze, JaRon Marshall, Cazayoux, and The Point, along with a late-night show from Black Angels solo project Christian Bland & The Revelators and Gus Baldwin & The Sketch at The 13th Floor. Canadian noise punk act Metz and Florida-based hardcore act Gouge Away will perform at Austin’s downtown East Side venue Parish after the festival’s Friday programming, with Toronto singer/songwriter Luna Li performing with local indie folk act Redbud at Empire Garage on Red River concurrent to the Parish show.

In addition to programming at the Parish, The 13th Floor will host three after parties to take place after the conclusion of each festival day at Far Out. The Friday after show will feature Portland, Oregon’s Spoon Benders and “Mysterious Headliner,” Space God???. The second night will feature a special reunion set from 60s Corpus Christi garage rock legends, The Zakary Thaks, joined by eccentric local punk act Lord Friday The 13th. For the final night, Nolan Potter’s Nightmare Band will celebrate the release of their forthcoming LP with a headlining set paired with Los Angeles psychedelic improv supergroup, GROOP, which will feature members of APF performing artist Hooveriii, members of Nightmare Band, plus special guests. 

Psychedelic Porn Crumpets

Psychedelic Porn Crumpets are an Australian band whose high-octane sound comes fully charged with insane-o riffs, progressive drum beats, and out-of-this-world vocal performances in the vein of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard and Frankie & The Witch Fingers. Having just appeared as an aftershow for King Gizzard at the fall edition of Levitation 2022, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets has proven that they’re never a sideshow but a main, headlining-worthy event and have dropped full-length after full-length of cuts that never miss. Their latest effort, Fronzoli, plunges the listener into an electric psych-rock whirlwind with fluttering, frantic instrumental pieces with a focused delivery from frontman/band pioneer Jack McEwan. 

Courtney Barnett

Australian singer/songwriter powerhouse Courtney Barnett is more than a blogosphere figurehead. On the Sydney native’s debut LP, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, Barnett’s attitude is infectious, and her declaratory, fiery vocal performance sets a standard for being one of the most banger-packed indie debuts of its era. Since releasing her debut, she has also recorded a collaborative record with Los Angeles singer/songwriter Kurt Vile. Besides this duo being a match made in heaven, the LP is a 9-track treasure chest of two artists honoring each other as centric figures in the current playing field of what independently triumphant music looks like in the current day. 

Levitation Room 

Los Angeles quartet Levitation Room just released their latest studio effort, Strange Weather, in 2024. Released via Greenwitch Records, known for hosting the likes of Acid Dad, Frankie & The Witch Fingers, L.A Witch, and Stonefield. This list goes on and on and shows a supercharged list of musicians accompanying Levitation Room in a group of some of the very best in neo-psychedelia. With instrumentals that touch on chamber jazz, Khruangbin-esque jam sessions, and vocal melodies that soothe the soul, Levitation Room will be a vibe that will immaculately puzzle piece themselves into this well-rounded lineup that will fit APF 2024 with celestial, bliss-filled vibes. 

Hooveriii

Los Angeles psych-kraut act Hooveriii is quickly becoming a local favorite in Austin. Since making local friends in the vein of Nolan Potter’s Nightmare Band, to which an opening slot for 90s grunge act Mudhoney caused a next-day, stayover jam session with Nolan Potter and the members of his band at Red River Cultural District hangout, The 13th Floor, Hooveriii’s local presence has since become a celebrated affair. Fresh off the release of their 2023 album, Pointe, the California genre blenders have never sounded more larger-than-life, and yet another performance in Austin in less than a year will show them greasing the wheels for a vast ensemble that accounts for a wide array of sounds that span generations of oddities.

Frankie & The Witch Fingers

Los Angeles’ Frankie & the Witch Fingers aren’t a “New” band anymore. Frontman Dylan Sizemore, bassist Nikki Pickle, drummer Nick Aguilar, and lead guitarist Josh Menashe sound more dialed in than ever on their seventh studio album, Data Doom, and recently played to a sold-out show at local venue Parish last Fall. The West Coast act’s sound takes on psych-punk sensibilities, but their progressive influences and tight-knit attack sets them apart from being something in the vein of Osees or King Gizzard. The electric stage show from the Frankie quartet is a rapid-fire highway of fuzzed-out power chords and polyrhythmic drum beats, all tied together with a heavy-as-hell rhythm section that sends the crowd into berserk mode wherever the band takes the stage to perform. 

Witch

J. Mascis’ history with Austin will stretch into 2024 with his second appearance in town since South By Southwest last month. Following a triumphant performance from his longtime group, Dinosaur Jr., the East Coast native will return to Austin for Austin Psych Fest with his stoner metal outfit, Witch. Through the heavy music lens of garage god Kyle Thomas, aka King Tuff, Witch blends the rock and roll expertise of both seasoned musicians; having crafted a sparse but hard-hitting output, Witch plays tunes that pay homage to our stoner metal overlords Black Sabbath and Electric Wizard, crafting a handful of songs that will make for a set that is not to be missed for April’s Levitation festival edition.

All set times for Austin Psych Fest and additional festival information can be found via Levitation’s website here.