The Besnard Lake's Jace Lasek may hail from the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, but when the band comes to Los Angeles this week it will be a sonic homecoming of sorts. Hollywood-ready plot lines are stitched throughout the band's three albums, where songs of spies, betrayal and delusions are delivered with grandeur. 

A Besnard Lake arrangement ebbs and flows, with oceanic waves of guitar enveloping the listener, and tender harmonies calming the band's roar. It's a vision, said Lasek, that can be traced to Southern California pop icon Brian Wilson. 

"I was always really enamored with the way Brian Wilson put together ‘Good Vibrations'," Lasek said from the road on Saturday. "The verses were recorded at one studio, and the chorus was recorded somewhere else, and you can kind of hear how it goes from a dark texture to a brighter texture. That largely has to do with the different studios, and I always thought that was really cool, where different sections of the song have completely different textures. We pursue that idea."

Somehow this happens every South by Southwest. Despite the fact that nearly every band in attendance at the annual festival plays somewhere between five and 10 times, shows are missed, commitments are broken, schedules run late and conflicts suddenly materialize. Such was the case every time I tried to catch Merge Records' Let's Westle, who had the misfortune of playing opposite the Besnard Lakes on Thursday night in Austin, Texas.  

Such a shame, as the jangly Brit-poppers, with their prep-school look and sing-along "ba-ba-ba" backing harmonies, would have been the perfect tonic to much of the noise and atmospheric music that permeates the Austin experience. Just check single "We Are the Men You'll Grow to Love Soon," which turns nice-guy bitterness into a three-minute slice of upbeat charm.

Willing to wait for all the pretty gals to outgrow their bad-boy phase, singer Wesley Patrick Gonzalez pleads, "We are the most reliable guys in the world," and throws in some hand claps before the girls with the bangs have time to roll their eyes. Much of the band's "In the Court of the Wrestling Let's," which was released today, is equally clever and fast. The act is playing tonight with Titus Andronicus, a Jersey punk-sprawl outfit that has gotten plenty of raves on this here blog, so now there are multiple reasons to stay out late on a school night.

-- Todd Martens

Let's Wrestle with Titus Andronicus at the Bootleg Theatre, 2220 Beverly Blvd. Tickets are $10. 

Memorable moments include discovering Seattle's feminist hip-hop duo Thee Satisfaction, and a gracious celebration of Alex Chilton.

A stranger wandering into the scene that overtakes downtown Austin, Texas,  every year during the music portion of the South by Southwest festival could be forgiven for thinking it was some kind of apocalypse. The din, the trash, the packs of stumblers forming strange clumps of humanity in the middle of each block and then dispersing across the intersections -- the total environment emanates disaster.

It's really a party, of course, a packed gathering of fans jumping from club to club in search of the perfect set from the thousand-plus artists playing dozens of showcases in dozens of venues around Austin's core. Young artists hope to be noticed, older ones renew their connections with fans and one another, and tipsy college kids shove up against music biz moguls in hopes of hearing something unforgettable.

The truth is that, though it can feel uncomfortable to the point of hazard,  SXSW is one of the few settings in which devoted rock and pop lovers can feel as if the music industry is not in a catastrophic state. The daytime panels, though often notably underattended given the stakes, address the problems facing an art form in transition, but once the music starts -- and it really never stops here -- all such concerns are forgotten. Nearly every club door offers the chance of a breakthrough, and each new conversation offers hints that the health of grass-roots music might be just fine.

Some artists, like Los Angeles band Local Natives, rode in on a pretty big wave of excitement and fulfilled that promise with tight, memorable sets. Others -- like one of my favorite finds, Seattle's rambunctiously adorable feminist hip-hop duo Thee Satisfaction -- gained word-of-mouth traction over the course of several performances.

South by Southwest is so big at this point, and so varied, that drawing any conclusions from it is a fool's game. This year had to deal with one terrible tragedy: the Wednesday death in New Orleans of Alex Chilton, who was scheduled to play at Antone's on Saturday with the reunited version of his crucial 1970s band Big Star, and who instead was honored by many of his peers and inheritors at a tribute concert.

But whole strata of festival participants had no idea of Chilton's importance. They were busy with their own concerns, like Perez Hilton's annual to-do, or sets by major artists such as Muse and Hole. They supported their own interests; the heavy metal offerings alone, ranging from the great Motörhead to such young stars as High on Fire and Priestess, could have satisfied a headbanger for a year.

There isn't much that can slow the music industry's annual spring break party that is the South by Southwest conference. Despite continued declines in CD sales, concerns over a major industry merger and the recent passing of the beloved pop craftsman Alex Chilton, nearly 2,000 bands played over four days in Austin, Texas, some as many as three of four times per day, and all hoping to snare a bit of the spotlight -- or simply reclaim it. 

When the sponsors leave town and the last beer can is swept up, the industry that most of the artists at SXSW are still trying to penetrate won't always be a welcoming one. The fest played host to big acts trying to snare some critical love (Muse), artists on the comeback rant (Courtney Love), indie cult heroes in need of a larger audience (the Besnard Lakes, above) and hyped artists making the best of their first trips to Austin (the Dum Dum Girls, Sleigh Bells). 

It's easy to say there's something for everyone in Austin during SXSW. If one wants only to listen to live hip-hop or noise bands for nearly 96 hours, there's no place easier to do that than the Texas capital during mid-March. If one wants to forgo registering for the fest -- and clearly many do, as a SXSW spokeswoman said registration was expected to match last year's total of around 12,000, and yet the parties and crowds swell every year -- one can easily still see all the buzzed-about artists.

Yet once everyone has retreated back to his or her respective starting cities, the business that awaits them won't be offering the free flavored mix drinks as in Austin, to say the least. Many artists at SXSW tend to the artier side -- the sweepingly grand electronic soundscapes of Sweden's Björk-influenced jj come to mind -- yet Matador head Gerard Cosloy noted that for all the success the Internet has brought to the underground community, it isn't getting any easier to make a living. 

"We have to work twice as hard and spend twice as much money to sell half as much as we used to," Cosloy said, adding that the market for mid-level success for indie artists -- about 15,000 in sales -- has "completely disappeared." 

There are, of course, the media-hyped sources of revenue that are supposedly going to save the music industry -- we've all read countless stories with someone saying a cliche like "TV is the new radio." After all, even the XX, a band that experiments with song structures at their most tense and minimal, can shoot up the charts after having a cut in an Olympics-themed advertisement.  

But such things are luck, not a business model, said SXSW participants. "They're quite amazing windfalls," said Domino head Kris Gillespie, before quickly adding that purses are getting tighter. "The money has dropped off the edge of a cliff, in terms of advertising money."

It's now an industry of niches, and nowhere is that more evident than SXSW. Whether taking in the off-kilter, blues-spiked rock of Holly Miranda, or the devastating crush of guitars and harmonies that is Australia's Beaches, much of what was heard at SXSW has a targeted audience. Although the distinctions between cult and mainstream are getting blurred.

"The majors are looking at us, the indies," said Portia Sabin, who oversees Kill Rock Stars. "The business model of the majors, where you need to sell 250,000 just to recoup your investment in a new band, that's not practical anymore. So how you can make money if you only sell 5,000 copies? That's what we know."

In other words, they know how to survive. That's a trait that's going to come in handy as the industry further consolidates. For those who opted to stick close to the convention center rather than consume free cupcakes and watered down beer all day, the recent merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation became a contentious subject. 

The Department of Justice's assistant attorney general for antitrust, Christine Varney, was on hand to defend the government's approval of the merger, although the industry's skepticism and concerns weren't really answered. Varney stayed on point, telling SXSW that the Justice Department had attempted to create more competition in the ticketing space, and not dismantle Live Nation Entertainment's massive vertical integration, which puts ticket sales, promotion, concert venues and artist management under one roof.  

Domino's Gillespie slammed the green light as "immoral," and Varney urged angry SXSW guests to write the Justice Department. Comments on the merger are being accepted until early May, and will be reviewed to see whether further court action is necessary, she said. 

"I know it's not a satisfying answer," Varney said when pressed as to why the Justice Department didn't force Live Nation Entertainment to A) sell its management firm, B) sell its venues or C) allow competing promoters to leave their contracts with Ticketmaster. "We are constrained by the law. The overlap that we found was in ticketing. That's why the remedy rests in ticketing."

There is a so-called consent decree, which will allow competitors of Live Nation Entertainment to report anti-competitive practices. And if you have a problem with that? "The only thing I can tell you to do is to continue to try and work your deals and let us know if you think the consent decree is being violated," Varney said.

As the big guys get bigger, SXSW was a fitting reminder that while the music industry may still like to party and channel its reckless past, endurance is rarely sustained by indulging in excess. 

"There's a lot less money being advanced for tour support," Matador's Cosloy said. "That's due to not just shrinking record sales, but what's happening in the live music business. When someone says to me, 'What do you do for tour support?' I say, 'We'll be very supportive. If you need to call someone in the middle of the night, we'll be supportive.' "

And now for the music: After the jump, some of the acts that made the biggest lasting impression on me: 

The likes of Perez Hilton and Rachael Ray threw in-demand parties on the fourth and -- for all intents and purposes -- final day of the South by Southwest music conference and festival in Austin, Texas. With just under 2,000 bands, many of them on the hunt for next-big-thing status, plotting a show-going schedule can be an arduous task, and it's easy to see why designer quesadillas and flavored drinks can be a welcome distraction.  

Yet after the guest lists have been tossed and the music industry has retreated from the Texas capital, it won't be the VIP parties that made a lasting impression. It will be the artists. 

Los Angeles has a worthy contender in the Dum Dum Girls, the '60s-tinged fuzzed-out rockers who take old-fashioned melodies and make them streetwise tough. All sporting different variations of black, the Dum Dum Girls have a look that could be ripped from a vintage film noir poster, and a sound that mirrors that femme fatale image. 

Though based in L.A., the Dum Dum Girls have felt a bit like outsiders. The band's rapid ascent began last fall in New York at the CMJ Music Marathon, and their hometown shows have been few and far between. The band's first SXSW comes near the eve of the March 30 release of the act's Sub Pop debut, "I Will Be," and in Austin, the band was more assured, confident and simply downright cool than it had been at its smattering of L.A. gigs.  

Opening with a slowed down and droned-out version of the Rolling Stones' "Play With Fire," the Dum Dum Girls offered the song as if it was a dare. The band stood largely in place, with a glare affixed out above the audience, lending a detached, effortless and old-fashioned rebellious rock 'n' roll attitude to its songs. Girl group harmonies grace the racing "Bhang, Bhang, I'm a Burnout," and drummer Frankie Rose, ex-Vivian Girls (a more 21st century reference point for the group), brought a defiant kick to the more moderately paced "Rest of Our Lives." 

Time will tell if such vintage trappings have a life outside of SXSW. Yet even if the Dum Dum Girls tap a rock 'n' roll sound that may live outside the mainstream, it's one that never really goes out of style. And speaking of style, it probably won't have hurt that the Dum Dum Girls have it in spades. 

Other notes from Day 4 of SXSW:

I arrived in Austin, Texas, on Tuesday, and spent much of my first two days talking to labels and publishing reps on Spotify, the hit European music subscription service that is seen as having the opportunity to shake up the digital landscape in the U.S. Yet Spotify was expected to arrive in the U.S. in early 2010, and we're approaching spring without a launch date. The story below was co-reported with our tech experts Alex Pham and Mark Milian, and it appeared in Friday's Business section. 
 - Todd Martens

The last time a young entrepreneur executed his promise to revolutionize music with computer software, the industry sued him for billions of dollars.

A decade after Shawn Fanning unleashed Napster, 26-year-old Daniel Ek is generating tidal waves across Europe with Spotify, a company that offers upward of 10 million songs, streamed free over the Internet. The difference this time is that Spotify is a legal service, sanctioned by the music industry -- to a degree.

Ek, Spotify's chief executive, had hoped to launch his service in the U.S. early this year. But he acknowledged that talks with record labels, along with thousands of music publishers and royalty collectors, had bogged down over details. Ek cited the complexity of dealing with numerous rights holders for the delay.

Some music executives have questioned whether Spotify's free, ad-supported service will help the beleaguered industry regain its economic footing. They worry that it could further erode the market for paid music.

Ek declined to detail the sticking points but said in an interview at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, this week that Spotify was taking the time to safeguard its contracts with the license holders by anticipating a variety of business models, such as student discounts or special offers bundled with a mobile phone service.

"This is a very, very complex industry," Ek said. "It's an industry that's been in decline for 10 years. They just want to make the right bet."

As industry conference and festival South by Southwest enters its home stretch, independent label heads such as Matador's Gerard Cosloy and Domino's Kris Gillespie raised concerns about the recent merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, and they also spoke on the ever-controversial, all-encompassing 360-label deals.

"Allowing the merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation was pretty immoral," Gillespie said at the start of a state-of-the-union panel, becoming a voice of opposition from the independent community. The recent formation of Live Nation Entertainment will put promotion, venues, management and ticket sales under one roof, creating a mega one-stop-shop for the record industry. Though much of Live Nation Entertainment's business is at the arena and amphitheater level, Gillespie and Cosloy laid out how the partnership can affect and alter the underground community. 

"They don't want to be a partner with the labels in selling tickets," Gillespie said. While he noted that Domino has zero interest in entering the ticket business, the live concert industry is one of the few areas of growth in the indie community. "We're selling more concert tickets for our artists than CDs," Gillespie said. "It really is a problem." 

Concert tickets for artists on Matador and Domino cost far less than the multi-hundred dollar seats for the Eagles, but they're still greater than the cost of a digital album download. Additionally, Cosloy noted that recent albums from Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo failed "to sell as many copies as we would have liked," but ticket sales were strong. Tickets, he added, weren't exactly cheap, and then were saddled with service charges that ranged between $10 and $20. 

Critically watching Fall Out Boy singer Patrick Stump play his first solo show at the small, smelly, not-quite jampacked Dirty Dog in Austin during South By Southwest was somewhat of a tricky proposition.

Can he be judged against the output of his arena-sized band, known for massive guitar-rock punk numbers and a cartoonish bassist who's a tabloid fixture? Or should he be seen on his own terms, as a new artist trying, like thousands of others, to use SXSW as a chance to break through?

There were certainly arguments for both; after all, Stump doesn't even look the same. Once famously, shyly pudgy, he's probably lost about 50 pounds since he was last seen on a stage, a now-svelte figure trying to find his way around his new body as the inner Chunk looks out.

Musically, it's clear that he's busy finding his own path as well. Gone are the distorted breakdowns and monster riffs, replaced by discotheque back beats and jazz-funk synths. Stump served as a one-man band for the five-song entirety of the show, on a couple of cuts looping instruments like Jon Brion's fumbling lab assistant, a task that tech problems (rather than instrumental prowess) revealed he wasn't quite up to.

On others, it was just the man, a guitar or keyboard, and a backing track, with Stump finding a groove and a surprisingly dynamic wail -- the pop-soul sound of someone who's never even heard of the Buzzcocks, let alone owns all their 45s.

It's not as huge a stretch as it sounds. After all, Fall Out Boy has collaborated with hip-hoppers, and Stump's on record as saying that he feels the roots of soul, rather than rock, as his inspiration. But tell that to the fan-girls waiting in earnest for an acoustic run-through of "Sugar, We're Going Down," or the music-biz hordes wondering how the hell this mainstream rocker even learned to play a Gm7 chord. For an arena-rock superstar, it was indulgent, to be sure. But for a brand-new artist, it was undoubtedly promising, as well.

-- Jeff Miller

Photo: Patrick Stump. Credit: Jeff Miller

It was past 12:30 a.m. when London's the XX took the stage on the third night of music showcases at South by Southwest. But no matter, this was music built for late-night listening.

The XX do a lot with very little, and the three-piece made a minimalistic statement with last year's self-titled debut. The band was coming to SXSW as an act on the rise. The XX have a date at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival next month, and recent licensing scores have of late pushed the album up the chart. 

On record, the XX are at times a bit stark, marrying just a few upper register guitar notes with rather deep bass notes. It's a simple contrast, but one the XX use to great effect. It's never difficult listening, as it's tied together sleek electronic rhythms. These are songs that could double as sci-fi soundscapes, and the back-and-forth vocals of Romy Madley and Oliver Sim are coolly distant, all while the lyrics probe the depths of a brokenhearted soul. 

Live, the band faithfully re-created the sounds on the record, but also gave a performance that was oddly mesmerizing. Sim is an imposing presence on stage, carrying a voice like Vincent Price and a bass playing style that sort of hovers over the instrument like a vulture pecking at its prey. He moves as if in slow motion, hovering during "Infinity" from the front of the stage to the lone cymbal that sat atop Jamie Smith's electronic equipment as if possessed by some otherworldly force. 

Smith himself is an impressive DJ artist to watch, moving between two tables and conjuring up alarming rhythmic quakes with extra emphasis. Madley, wearing a Lady Gaga tour shirt, delivered the lyrics in a hushed, sometimes matter-of-fact tone, and her guitar work stretched one or two notes into a bare yet memorable framework for the songs.While not pop melodies in the traditional sense, the XX's gentle repetitive calming sounds were the perfect tonic for the third night in Austin came to a close. 

Other notes from Day 3 of SXSW:

As the annual South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, reaches its midway point, artists and labels were splashed with some cold, hard facts as an early morning wake-up call Friday. Two early discussions called into question the relevancy of signing with a label, either major or indie, and illustrated the uphill battle that the nearly 2,000 bands performing in the Texas capital will face.

As sponsored parties toss away free beer and questionable tacos, it's easy to get swept up in the revelry. Impressive sets have arrived from such little-known indie acts as the Besnard Lakes and industry legends such as Roky Erickson, but as rootsy punk rockers Titus Andronicus sing, one can't necessarily get by on "merit and merit alone."

Rich Bengloff, who leads the American Assn. of Independent Music, dropped some updated industry stats that he said were courtesy of Nielsen SoundScan. Ten years ago, 28,000 full-length albums were released. That number swelled to 134,000 in 2009. More stark, of the 103,000 albums released in 2008, only about 6,000 sold more than 1,000 copies.

The odds, to put it mildly, aren't in the favor of the 2,000 bands performing during the music industry's annual spring break gathering. "It was a really simple industry," Bengloff said of the music business 20 years ago. "What you tried to do was get your music played on AM/FM radio. If it got played on the radio, it pushed people into record stores, where they bought these round plastic discs. If they bought these round plastic discs, we made a living."   

Across the hall at a panel on the shrinking label market, EMI A&R executive Steven Melrose noted that the physical retail landscape -- already decimated by the loss of Tower Records and hundreds of independents -- continues to shrivel. Big box retailer Best Buy, for instance, recently cut the number of titles the outlet carries from the label by half, Melrose said.

Veteran artist/executive Dez Dickerson then joked, "Pretty soon, they're going to have a cart outside Best Buy -- a little hot dog cart selling new releases."

The unsinkable Courtney Love comes to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, with a re-jiggered Hole. They headline the Spin@Stubbs showcase on Red River at 5 p.m.

Just as fascinating as Mrs. Cobain, maybe more, metal gods Gwar will be interviewed for an hour in Room 18abc of the Austin Convention Center, starting at 5 p.m. "You think you've got it tough in the music business? Try establishing a career when you're from another planet!" the SXSW music book asks. Maybe that's their secret.

Feeling something completely different? Folkie Victoria Williams takes part in a 15-minute set at Jovita's (1619 S. 1st St.) at 5:45 p.m.

Sonic Youth shredder Thurston Moore (above) returns to Austin for a solo performance at 8 p.m. at the Red 7.

Local Natives are getting some excellent -- and much-deserved -- buzz here. They play the Galaxy Room on 6th Street tonight at 9.

Several blocks away, She & Him play the Lustre Pearl at 10 p.m. M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel are hard to miss here. Not only are they playing several shows, but Deschanel's eyes also peer from magazine covers all over the dirty streets of Austin.

Canada's answer to both Billy Bragg and Ryan Adams, Matthew Good, plays the cozy basement of Prague just south of Congress on 5th Street at 11 p.m. Good doesn't tour the States often, so if you missed him at the Troubadour earlier this week, this might be your last chance to see him in the U.S.

Mimicking the Beatles in a weird way, sorta, Sum 41 will bring its pop punk to the roof of Maggie Mae's at midnight.

Then, finally, if you couldn't get into the Spin party, Hole is playing a late-night (1 a.m.) show at the Dirty Dog Bar on 6th Street. If you don't want to end your night with some celebrity skin, you're missing the point of this grand melange of excess. Go rock.

-- Tony Pierce from Austin

Photo of Thurston Moore at the Mohawk in 2008. Credit: Tony Pierce / Los Angeles Times

The craziest rumor I heard Thursday night at the South by Southwest Festival was that David Bowie was lurking around somewhere, possibly planning to jump onstage with Roky Erickson. The idea that the seemingly semi-retired Thin White Duke might show up for the annual set by Austin's beloved psychedelic outsider artist was utterly preposterous. But this is American pop's most hyperactive week and stranger collaborations have certainly happened within the mad din of thousands of artists playing nonstop for four days. So I headed over to La Zona Rosa at the end of my evening to check it out.

My fantasy mismatch turned out to be a ruse, but Erickson's set with the band Okkervil River still satisfied. The collaboration between the 62-year-old founder of the 13th Floor Elevators and the youngish, also Austin-based rock band was born at this fest a few years ago and has borne the fruit of a new release, "True Love Cast Out All Evil," coming from Anti- Records April 20. Performing songs from that project and a few Erickson faves -- including the garage rock Rosetta Stone "You're Gonna Miss Me," which provided a name for the heart-tugging 2005 documentary about Erickson's struggles with mental illness, Erickson and Okkervil (Rokkervil?) pushed every song toward grandiosity, but kept a sense of humor too.

I've seen Erickson with various collaborators over the years; he's often clearly nervous onstage. Relaxing into this matchup, he seemed completely at peace, without the stiffness and introversion that sometimes plague him. His grainy, cutting tenor sounded rich and redolent of the blues. Okkervil River singer and songwriter Will Sheff, who produced the new album, beamed at him and shared tattered harmonies. The whole set felt familial, no celebrity cameos required.