Memories play on long after SXSW

Sometimes you feel like giving your ears a little break after South by Southwest, but you always come away with one, three or 15 new favorites and plenty of moments to share with your friends. Here are highlights from some of the people we had covering SXSW 2011:

Michael Corcoran

OMD at the Spin party Friday. I was expecting to hate them, but on my way I thought I'd give them a song and stayed the whole set. "Enola Gay" was just what I needed.

Black Joe Lewis and the Relatives at Waterloo Records on Thursday. Lewis graciously let the Dallas-based gospel group steal a show that was great even before they took the stage.

Bob Geldof keynote address Thursday. An hour on the D-O-T and not a lull; best SXSW keynote yet.

Walking in as Robert Earl Keen played "Corpus Christi Bay" at ACL Live on Saturday. SXSW is my Corpus Christi Bay.

Foo Fighters at Stubb's on Tuesday. What a treat to see an arena band in a 2,000-capper. And the new album sounds great.

Deborah Sengupta Stith

Echocentrics. Sultry and smooth vocals over fuzzed out jazztronic grooves, the perfect SXSW kick-off soundtrack on a breezy spring night.

Fishbone. Frenetic energy, tight harmonies and bombastic horn blasts, Angelo Moore and crew partied like it was 1991.

Charles Bradley and the Menahan Street Band. Cathartic, explosive soul that reaches deep and shakes you to the core.

Khaira Arby. Desert queen from Mali whose soaring vocal prowess is matched by a divine sense of natural grace.

Peter Mongillo

Cults, Glasser and Tune-Yards at the Central Presbyterian Church. The music world is a competition for weirdos, but these three groups, representing rock, experimental music and pop, respectively, are pushing the envelope beyond the mainstream strange fed to us by Lady Gaga.

Carl Broemel at St. David's Bethel Hall. With help from bandmates Tom Blankenship and Bo Koster, the My Morning Jacket guitarist delivered a set of thoughtful, well-crafted singer/songwriter fare.

Deer Tick at Lustre Pearl. Billed as "Deervana," the Rhode Island rockers ended the festival in an unlikely way, with an entire set of Nirvana covers, and fired up the audience to a level rarely seen in recent years at SXSW.

Joe Gross

Wild Flag.Their set at the Merge Records showcase was one of the best I have seen in years, an emotional wipe-out up there with shows by such world-class live bands as Fugazi, the Jesus Lizard and, well, Sleater-Kinney, yet it was completely different from all of those. The hype was justified.

The Cave Singers and Cult of Youth.The former played an official SXSW showcase at Red 7 for its label, Jagjaguwar; the latter played an unofficial showcase/party at Beerland for its label, Sacred Bones. Both play a mutant folk music that moved in interesting ways, the sounds of a land that doesn't actually exist.

Beardyman. A complete unknown to me, this English fellow played a day party sponsored by Billboard at Buffalo Billiards and live-looped his own human beatboxing to create a set across the electronic spectrum, from hip-hop to jungle and back. There was almost an element of stand-up comedy to his act, which almost knocked him down to novelty status, except that his riff on dubstep was one of the funniest, canniest de-pantsings of that particular genre I've ever heard. Good job, man.

Chad Swiatecki

Charles Bradley. Pain and sorrow rarely sounds as inspirational as from this amazing soul man.

Screaming Females. Rumbling stoner punk from the most accurately named band at SXSW.

Black Angels. Too soon to call them stalwarts, but this Austin psych band is doing everything right at this point.

Telegraph Canyon. Big, wide open roots rock benefited from an unexpectedly excellent venue in Esther's Follies.

John T. Davis

Second-line parading down Congress and Sixth St. with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Big Chief Monk Boudreaux.

Watching Emmylou Harris in the intimate confines of Antone's, debuting an entire album's worth of new, unreleased material.