Sxsw

Lois Maffeo is on the go. She's singing her detached, romantic "love-rock" songs at the cozy Chicago House. She's outside Kinko's after midnight, busking for the crowds on the Sixth Street strip. She's bicycling with her bandmate, drummer Heather Dunn. And she's out on the links in pigtails and a straw hat, consorting with her punk-rock associates at a K Records party at Peter Pan Mini-Golf. Though Maffeo's Chicago House gig was a showcase here at this month's enormous South by Southwest Music + Media Conference (SXSW)

The Austin area is home to many internationally known musicians: recording artists such as Butch Hancock, Joe Ely, Charlie and Will Sexton, Jimmy Vaughan (and members of Double Trouble, the band of his late brother Stevie Ray), Lucinda Williams, Marcia Ball and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. But bubbling just below those big names are Austin institutions that haven't achieved national recognition yet. For some, it's overdue. For others, it's a few years away. Across the board, the quality of demo tapes and live shows by Austin bands is surprisingly high: Outfits that play only once or twice a month hit the stage screaming as if they performed every night.

One sunny afternoon at the South by Southwest music conference recently, Patrick Stickles led the Glen Rock, N.J., punk rockers Titus Andronicus - who headline an all-ages show at the Barbary in Northern Liberties on Thursday night - through a blistering set in a dark bar called Empire Live. With Titus' third SXSW show (of eight) over and done, the bearded 24-year-old took a coffee break and talked about The Monitor, the band's sophomore album, which has had praise heaped upon it since its release last month.

Back when RJD2 was a teenager named Ramble John Krohn in Columbus, Ohio, he found playing "quote-unquote real music" to be "insanely boring" and "soul-destroying. " Now he's a DJ, hip-hop producer and singer-songwriter who has lived in West Philadelphia since 2002 and has just released The Third Hand (. ), his third solo album. But at the time, he was in a high school music vocational program, looking forward to "going to college to get a music degree and making $40 a night playing jazz standards in bars.

The breathy back-and-forth vocals and simmering erotic tension that suffuse the debut album xx by the British indie band The xx might lead you to think that singers Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim are more than just friends. That's not the case. But Croft and Sim, who will play a sold-out show tomorrow at the sanctuary of the First Unitarian Church, have been extraordinarily good friends for as long as they can remember. Actually, longer. "We've been friends since we were 2 or 3," says Croft, who grew up with Sim in London's posh Chelsea section.

AUSTIN, Texas - In its 25th year, the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference took over the streets of Austin last week with more than 2,000 aspiring acts and a handful of headline-grabbers such as Kanye West and the Strokes, in a frenzy of activity in bars and parking lots, hotel lobbies and street corners. For the second year running, the geek gathering SXSW Interactive festival outdrew the musicfest it preceded, pulling in 19,000 official registrants compared with the 14,000 music-biz folks who came in hopes of making sense (and dollars)

"It's the first night of South by Southwest, I think," said J. Blynn, the Philadelphia-bred, New York-based coleader of the promising pop-rock band Harper Blynn, on stage at the PureVolume House on Tuesday. "It may not be officially, but we're starting it early tonight. " So it is with SXSW: Just when you thought it was monstrous enough, it gets a little bigger. It used to be that you could arrive in Austin on a Tuesday and ease into the action of the sprawling music festival and conference, which will present a couple of thousand bands over four days and nights at 76 official venues and a lot of unofficial ones.

Lou Reed loves Dr. Dog. Reed's keynote address at this year's South by Southwest Festival took the form of an interview/conversation with the Philadelphia-reared record producer Hal Willner. Reed - who's here to promote Berlin, the movie directed by Julian Schnabel of 2006 performances of Reed's classic 1973 album - was asked what music he was listening to. Reed mentioned the Japanese noise-rock band Melt Banana, the Toronto electro-dance band Holy F-, and "the one I really like is Dr. Dog. " The West Philly band took part in a Reed tribute at the Fader Fort here Thursday.

Right after bands, writers and other music biz folk converge in Austin, Texas, for the weeklong South by Southwest schmooze-a-thon, much of the activity heads in our direction, along with the usual local gems. Japanese psych-rock blow-out collective Acid Mother's Temple starts the week off just right at the Khyber (9 tonight, 56 S. 2nd St., 215-238-5888, $8), along with the equally mind-bending Major Stars and ear-splitting locals 1929. Across town at Tritone (9 tonight, 1508 South St., 215-545-0475, $5)

Even at the self-promotional bonanza that is the South by Southwest Music Festival, it's not common for an interviewee to answer questions in songs composed on the spot, delivered with the help of a cappella singers. But then, there's only one Kim Fowley. For those unfamiliar with his resum?, the songwriter, manager, and impresario has worked with Alice Cooper, Kiss, Helen Reddy, the Germs, and Frank Zappa. Fowley claims to have invented the tradition of holding up matches at concerts while emceeing John Lennon's 1969 Live Peace in Toronto show, and had his first No. 1 hit as a producer in 1960 with the Hollywood Argyles' "Alley Oop. " Most famously, though, Fowley was the Svengali behind the Runaways, the 1970s teenage girl band whose gritty and glammy adventures have hit the big screen in director Floria Sigismondi's The Runaways, starring Kristen Stewart as guitarist Joan Jett, Dakota Fanning as singer Cherie Currie, and Michael Shannon as a possibly insane wild-eyed visionary named Kim Fowley who's given to pronouncements like, "This isn't about women's lib, it's about women's libido!"