{"id":5371,"date":"2025-10-08T23:27:26","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T23:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unlockingsite.com\/?p=5371"},"modified":"2025-10-13T12:25:27","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T12:25:27","slug":"indie-rock-bliss-backstage-at-austin-city-limits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.unlockingsite.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/08\/indie-rock-bliss-backstage-at-austin-city-limits\/","title":{"rendered":"Indie Rock Bliss: Backstage at Austin City Limits"},"content":{"rendered":"

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There are certain seismic music events \u2014 songs, artists, and memories that ignite you, and remind you of what you love about music. They are the moments you experience that shape you and stick with you forever.<\/p>\n

For me, those times include (but are not limited to) the first time I watched The Strokes<\/a>‘ music video for their fuzzy, retro-drenched, guitar track \u201cLast Night,\u201d in my teenage bedroom as their singular embodiment of cool played out on the screen. I was in awe. There was also the candid in-studio interview I had with another New York City-born icon, King Princess<\/a>, in a room filled with vintage equipment, listening to stories of the hits that had been created on the mixing board. I was gobsmacked.<\/p>\n

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This past weekend, under the unforgiving south west sun, I added a few new ones to my list, while reliving others thanks to an invite from T-Mobile<\/a> to spend Austin City Limits<\/a> weekend one, backstage, sidestage, and (of course) in their festival hot-spot Club Magenta: a members-only lounge where you can view acts on the T-Mobile stage with the comfort of AC, charging ports, and daily prize drops, all exclusive to those with Magenta Status (aka, fans with T-Mobile plans).<\/p>\n

T-Mobile\u2019s backstage also included artist Q&A\u2019s (like one with PAPER <\/em><\/em>favorite floweovlove<\/a>, who btw, showed up to her set dressed like a cigarette \u2026 smokin\u2019<\/em><\/em>.) It also meant side-stage views for acts like King Princess<\/a>, who perfomred her stirring, gut-punch of a track \u201cGirl Violence,\u201d Role Model<\/a>, who gave us millenial life when he brought Lizzie McGuire out during \u201cSally, When The Wine Runs Out,\u201d Rainbow Kitten Surprise<\/a>, who played a crowd so massive my stomach dropped (later I showed their guitarist Darrick “Bozzy” Keller my view from the sky, and he confirmed it was epic), and (of course) I got to scream along to one of my favorite bands The Strokes as they headlined the stage on night two (from front of house, thanks to, again, T-Mobile.)<\/p>\n

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\n@ericacxmpbell<\/a><\/p>\n

My dream date. Cute. #rolemodel #hilaryduff #acl<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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So what was PAPER\u2019s <\/em><\/em>biggest takeaway from our weekend in Texas? From watching King Princess spin at the Patr\u00f3n\u2019s La Hacienda<\/a> in the center of the fest, to poetic-crooner Jensen McRae\u2019s backstage Q&A, and even watching The Backseat Lovers serenade the crowd while charging our phone in the backstage lounge \u2014 indie rock, with its daring guitars and spirited pop melodies, is alive and well and there\u2019s no better testament to that than the fans, roars, and smiles we witnessed first-hand in Austin last weekend.<\/p>\n

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Photography Courtesy of T-Mobile, Getty<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are certain seismic music events \u2014 songs, artists, and memories that ignite you, and remind you of what you love about music. They are the moments you experience that shape you and stick with you forever. For me, those times include (but are not limited to) the first time I watched The Strokes‘ music […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5373,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.unlockingsite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.unlockingsite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.unlockingsite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.unlockingsite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.unlockingsite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5371"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.unlockingsite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5379,"href":"http:\/\/www.unlockingsite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5371\/revisions\/5379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.unlockingsite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.unlockingsite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.unlockingsite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.unlockingsite.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}