‘This is the least weird SXSW I’ve been to’: The 10 best things we saw at SXSW

At SXSW, the sound guy you chat with before your last-minute DJ set turns out to have several concept albums on Spotify about wizards. Influencers you met during a marketing dinner take you to parties where, turns out, the venue’s at capacity.

Carpetman is a noteworthy performer at South By, too. He’s a Ukrainian TikToker with more than a million followers… who wears a carpet mask and performs R&B. His falsetto is overpowering.

Amy Winehouse reportedly performed here in 2007 inside a wrestling ring that a bar used for problematic events. I’m not sure if this lore is true—she played a handful of shows in 2007 in Austin, Texas during SXSW—but I believe it. A SXSW superfan who runs a Discord about SXSW told me so, after a searing performance by Beth McCarthy on Saturday.

McCarthy is the U.K.’s response to Chappelle Roan. I’m confident she’ll be a festival headliner within the year.

So what exactly is SXSW? Think about Christmas. It’s what you make it.

It is a business conference where people in the arts and tech startup space discuss the future. Where internet culture takes root. The QR code and Twitter were breakout ideas here. As was TikTok-viral rapper Flo Milly. Streaming series and comedies get the full-service red carpet premieres that other film festivals reserve for dramas.

“When I saw the potential in this category, I had to be a part of it,” Ryan Winkler told me about his journey into the THC drink market. We were at punk rock club the Mohawk, about to watch Memphis soul legends the Bar-Keys. Winkler is the former Minnesota House majority leader, and he noticed I was sampling his product.

For nine days this month, the Daily Dot was on the ground reporting at SXSW. Here is the best stuff that we watched. —Ramon Ramirez

The best of SXSW 2025

1) Friendship

A24’s comedy film Friendship, starring Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd, had its U.S. premiere this year as part of SXSW’s Film lineup. The festival-favorite drew in big crowds, rapturous laughs, and a subsequent “buzz screening,” giving audiences another chance to view the movie not to be missed. 

Writer-director Andrew DeYoung’s debut feature follows Craig Waterman (played by Tim Robinson) as he desperately seeks a friend in his too-cool neighbor Austin Carmichael (played by Paul Rudd) in this funny, friendship-breakup-nightmare odyssey. 

Craig Waterman can’t get it quite right. He overfills his coffee mug at his mundane corporate job, where he creates “habit-forming” technology. His wife, Tami (played by Kate Mara), would rather hang out with her ex-boyfriend Devon after a battle with cancer (she opens the film with a compelling monologue Craig hysterically interjects). He just wants to watch the new Marvel movie with his family (with no spoilers, for god’s sake). Craig awkwardly stumbles through his ordinary life—DeYoung wrote the role for the comedian and creator of I Think You Should Leave and wanted to shoot the film like Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master.

When a package is accidentally delivered to Craig’s home instead of his neighbor Austin, Craig abandons the post of his living room to return it—and its friendship at first sight. He’s enamored by Austin’s suburban suave and effortless cool. Austin’s a local TV weatherman and band frontman with a penchant for ancient artifacts. With Austin’s charisma opposite Craig’s lack thereof, watching the unlikely pair is thrilling.

A budding friendship sprouts. Craig will seemingly do anything to be with Austin (who wouldn’t obsess over being Paul Rudd’s friend?). However, the bromance quickly falls out when Craig painfully embarrasses himself in a group hang of Austin’s other pals. Left with the taste of a sweet friendship, Craig fixates on trying to mend things to the point of destruction across all aspects of his life (whose descent into madness is wildly and hilariously entertaining). In this absurd yet endearing tale of male friendship with a fever-dream quality in its cinematography and score, and knockout performances, audiences have much to look forward to. Friendship will be available to view in theaters starting May 9. —Rusama Islam

2) U.S. Girls 

Sometimes, you leave a set with a new, clear mindset, invigorated by the performance, even enlightened. I left U.S. Girls’ singular SXSW set at the Mohawk on Tuesday feeling confused. The Toronto-based experimental pop project’s careening between bluesy licks and soul-pop fare felt stilted, despite bandleader Meghan Remy’s demeanor being anything but. Remy’s voice stretches like bubblegum but reverberates from a deep pit in her stomach. Those qualities are clear from the album recordings, but seeing it paired to a body, I can’t help but imagine she’s a Jenny Slate character. —Laiken Neumann

3) J’cuuzi

This is the least weird SXSW I’ve been to (derogatory), but there was still some cool stuff to check out; Austin’s own punky, avant-garde duo J’cuuzi put on a real fun performance at Hotel Vegas. Vocalist Gorge Bones, in a bra and Doc Martens, started a mosh pit (where I spotted my boss), sang from atop the merch table, and did split-leg headstands on a spinning chair.  It was dancey, the vibes were good. —Mariam Sharia

4) Ginuwine, performing with a Sandy Hook dad

You remember Ginuwine? The paralegal turned R&B superstar? He headlined an anti-gun violence concert that also booked millennial sad bros Passion Pit and ‘90s alt bros Everclear. His set was open to the public and you would have thought it was 1997 the way fans lined the block at Empire Garage. At the end, he brought out Marc Barden, father of a Sandy Hook victim and activist. Barden’s a secret shredder. Barden led a 10-minute, set-closing version of “Pony” with extended guitar jamming. Who says virality can’t be merit-based? —R.R.

5) Deepfaking Sam Altman

My unintentional mission to get to the bottom of AI at this year’s festival began with the film Deepfaking Sam Altman. The documentary from Adam Bhala Lough, who gained acclaim for 2023 HBO doc series Telemarketers, similarly tries to get to the bottom AI itself. Lough attempts to interview OpenAI Sam Altman, who simply won’t return his calls. The director meets Altman at his level by creating a deepfake, which he comes to know as SamBot. Traversing the legal implications of his fake tech billionaire, Lough pokes fun at Altman’s own use of celebrities’ personas without consent. The humor wears off, though, once Lough’s attempts to contradict the “relationship” he’s built with SamBot to his relationship with his son in reality. This leaves a muddled message, spitting cliches about “real” connections. Is Lough just trolling Altman and the audience the whole time? I’m not sure. But in the growing age of insincerity now backed by artificial intelligence, I should probably figure that out. —L.N.

READ MORE of the Dot’s SXSW 25 coverage:

• ‘There’s so many ways this could go wrong’: Should you be scared of AI? Experts say absolutely
• Bryan Johnson is playing the internet like an improv stage
• ‘I must accept the title’: Whataburger Museum of Art realizes long-time dream for Texas artists

6) Eye-rollin’ at A.I.

Much of the panels contemplated A.I.’s imminent impact on various industries; to me it sounded like a lot of unsubstantiated predictions or brand advertising, maybe because I remember this same sort of hype with NFTs three years ago. When’s the last time you heard about NFTs? Of course I do acknowledge A.I. is different, even inevitable, maybe even game-changing; I just don’t know how exactly, and neither does anyone else. —M.S.

7) The Dutchman

The Cinema Center hosted one wrap party after another during its four-day SXSW residency at Higbie’s. Celebs from Matthew McConaughey to Daisy Ridley dropped by. And you can tell it was a good movie because the cast has just seen it and now they are exuberant. Based on vibes alone, The Dutchman looks like a must-watch. Leads André Holland, Kate Mara, Zazie Beetz, and Aldis Hodge were chatty and all stayed for the full three hours. Early reviews are positive, too. And Mara’s being hailed as the “Queen of SXSW” by the L.A. Times because she debuted three projects this year. The film is an adaptation of a heralded 1964 play about race, love, and identity. No release date has been set. —R.R.

8) Taxidermists

It doesn’t get much more lo-fi than this. A Massachusetts duo featuring just a fuzzy guitar and bass-heavy drums, Taxidermists delivered loose indie-rock to a packed Hotel Vegas Thursday night. One of the two also performed last year’s SXSW as LUCY (Cooper B. Handy), a synthy, experimental pop project that samples the Titanic theme over a trap beat (I did not enjoy it). Either way, lo-fi is at his core. As Sophie Kemp wrote for Pitchfork, “Handy is kind of a white rapper, but he’s also kind of like Daniel Johnston.” East Coast rockers leaning into the punk influence a bit too hard with a subtle British affectation? Well, it is New England! —L.N.

9) Holland

I checked out Holland, a horror movie starring Nicole Kidman and Matthew Macfadyen. It sort of fell apart in the middle but was still enjoyable for me, being a fan of both actors. What else? A lot of weed sodas and gummies and stuff being handed out, constrained by Texas’ weird weed laws, delta 8, delta 9, what have you. I spoke with anti-aging biohacker Bryan Johnson the day before his keynote address — he was lovely and earnest. He may have a new convert in me. Oh and I spotted my favorite Austin legend, the Batman. —M.S.

10) Shiho Yabuki

Music at SXSW isn’t the glossy blowout that it was a decade ago. Next year, the conference will condense into seven days and cut the final music-only Saturday altogether. 

Saturday night I walked from the Belmont to Hotel Vegas at midnight to watch ‘80s electronica icon Egyptian Lover. The line was so long I made the 1.2-mile hike for nothing. Why the heck was there such a demand for a 63-year-old producer? We call this chunk of the conference “Deep South By,” where the record nerds show out.

And for music nerds, SXSW remains incredible: You can watch New Orleans twerk queen Big Freedia debut her gospel project. You can watch Afrobeats artists who sound like Wizkid and Burna Boy dance the night away at Flamingo Cantina, one of Austin’s few dedicated venues for Black music. You can watch the masked BlackGold, fresh off a stint opening for Limp Bizkit, play nu-metal that sounds like peak P.O.D. You can watch rapper Wave Chappelle fresh off an 18-hour drive from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, work a room like only a seasoned emcee can.

You can watch Rolling Stone-cover-donning country darling Megan Moroney belt breakup anthems. You can watch Grupo Frontera, which recently denounced rumors that its members supported President Donald Trump by saying it wouldn’t support political parties that were anti-immigrant, play to a sea of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans with full-force arena lighting. And afterward, you’ll get free bags of McDonald’s egg McMuffins. 

You can watch New Zealand R&B stars Teo Glacier and J. Tajor, who effectively make Backstreet Boys B-sides, play bonafide hits in front of 30 people. You can watch the nearly 80-year-old John Fogerty play the CCR songs now that he’s won a lawsuit to get his catalog back.

I’ll most remember 69-year-old experimental pianist Shio Yabuki performing at the Central Presbyterian Church. She’s prodigious enough to compose at will. So her interpreter would ask the audience for a feeling such as “despair” or “death,” and she’d offer up 3-minute piano songs to match the mood. At the end, someone asked for “unicorn on the sea,” and then danced in a unicorn mask next to her grand piano. She does this on TikTok Live, too, her interpreter said.

Studies show that consuming art changes our neural pathways and makes us more empathetic people. You really can’t do it enough. —R.R.

BONUS: The 40 best songs I heard at SXSW 2025, on a Spotify playlist

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