Keep Austin Live
Moody Honors Senior Capstone Project
In the 1970s, Willie Nelson, and other artists like him who didn’t conform to the Nashville sound and ideals, moved to Austin so they could express themselves and build audiences that embraced counterculture. This would eventually end up becoming what we know now as the modern Austin music scene. Since then, Austin has become known as the “Live Music Capital of the World” and continues to be an incubator for emerging artists who are finding their sound and building their careers. This project tells the stories of five of these up and coming artists, how they navigate the Austin music scene, carry on the legacy of Austin music, and Keep Austin Live.
Blankstone
“[Austin is] a place where people’s creativities are grown in a way you can’t really see in other places. I think it’s a really beautiful community that we have.”
Singer Evania Shibu sits at a table near the stage, nervously watching another band perform. “They’re really good,” she says as she waits for her band’s turn to take the stage. Up until this point, her band had only played one other show.
Blankstone is a five-piece indie rock band that was formed in the spring of 2025. Although the band had been practicing and writing music for almost a year, they didn’t start performing until last October.
As a newer and lesser known band in a large music scene, Blankstone has felt a lot of pressure to make a name for themselves. “We do go through imposter syndrome, but from making friends in this community, we definitely have felt more at home here.” The community aspect has been extremely important for Shibu and the band to be able overcome the challenges that come with pursuing music in the Live Music Capital of the World.
The moment that Shibu recalls as the first time where she and her band felt like they belonged in the Austin music scene was when they played their first show in October of 2025. “It felt really good to perform up there. It was like a good amount of people in the crowd . . . we felt like we belong ‘cause people wanted to hear us perform.” From this show, Blankstone was able to gain a lot more confidence in themselves and their music.
Now with a community of musicians and fans supporting her and her band, Shibu has a new outlook on the pressure she always feels before going on stage. “Honestly, from these pressures, we are just pushed to grow and get even better, so I think it’s a good thing.”
Lynndigo
“At first it felt heavy. Now it feels free . . . It’s like I’m a part of a family from generations that I never even met, but I can still feel the music within everybody.”
From a young age, Kaylie Lynn knew that she wanted to pursue music. “I was a theatre kid, and I grew up, when I was little, watching Hannah Montana. So I was like, okay, I love Hannah Montana, I should do what she does.” A few years later, her confidence started fading and she decided to leave the music dream behind for a while. It wasn’t until after she left school in St. Louis that she would return to the idea of pursuing music.
During a gap year after returning to Texas, Lynn went through what she described as a “quarter life crisis.” She had no idea what she was going to do with the rest of her life, so she decided to give music a try. In the fall of 2025, she transferred to UT Austin, signed to their student-run label UTalent Records, and started performing under the stage name Lynndigo.
When she debuted in August, Lynn was intimidated by the Austin music scene. She felt like no one would respect her and that she was “just some young girl doing this for the first time,” but then something clicked. In November, she and her band were playing a packed show at Stubb’s BBQ, and she felt the energy of the crowd singing her songs back to her, a moment that she described as “magical.” She realized that as long as she loves what she’s doing on stage and she’s creating something that is genuine, that’s all that matters.
Since then, Lynn’s perspective on the Austin music scene has changed. What was once an overwhelming scene where she was unsure of herself is now a space where she can be vulnerable and fully express herself through her music. “It’s allowed me to speak parts of myself that I don’t think I’d ever really get out there if I weren’t doing music.”
Now, Lynn commands the stage at every performance, putting on energetic shows full of upbeat music, fun dance breaks, and lots of bubbles.
Camille Stites
“They call Austin the Live Music Capital of the World. I’m not sure what I expected that to mean before I moved out here.”
Camille Stites has been doing music her whole life. She has been singing since she could talk, she started playing keys at eight years old, and guitar at 13. She was in choir in middle school and started performing in travelling bands in high school. When it came time for her to go to college, it was no surprise that she would choose to go to school in the Live Music Capital of the World.
“My biggest draw to Austin was the music scene.” When Stites arrived in Austin, she found her bandmates and started playing gigs all around the city. At first, she felt like she was “a very small fish in a big pond,” but eventually she was able to learn the ropes and put herself out there more. From there, Austin has become “very welcoming and homey” and a place where she can make a name for herself and build community around her music.
One of Stites’ biggest takeaways from pursuing music in Austin is that Austin has allowed her to be her most authentic self. Her music does not fit into one genre, but rather it is influenced by multiple genres including: classic rock, jazz, blues, soul, and pop. She said that the realization that she can lean into her genre-bending music and doesn’t have to force herself into a box was one of the biggest steps she has taken in her career. "I think that that has opened up a lot of opportunity for us because we can kind of mesh ourselves into any part of the scene.”
Stites is now preparing to release her debut album, Nikon, which showcases her unique voice and the wide range of music she makes. Her album comes out on May 9, 2026, and she has an album release show that night at Antone’s.
Selûna
“In Austin, everyone’s so open to new ideas, new kinds of music, and in other places, other music scenes aren’t.”
One of the main draws to Austin for many musicians is its openness to more experimental genres of music, and that was definitely the case for alternative rock band, Selûna.
Selûna got their start in 2020 when a group of friends in Arlington decided that they wanted to play music together. Soon after they started, COVID hit and they couldn’t perform live, but this didn’t stop them. Instead, they used this time to write music and rehearse as much as they could. Once venues started opening again, they started playing gigs around Arlington and the Dallas-Fort Worth area. When they graduated from high school, they moved to Austin and continued playing together.
Selûna’s music is a mix of indie rock and midwest emo, with influences from Spanish music. It is a very different sound than what you’d typically hear in other music scenes. Lead singer John Pokrifcsak stated, “I lived in Nashville for a while . . . it’s one thing, one way of playing. Nashville is country, and it’s not open to new kinds of music, and I don’t like that. I like new scenes when people do new things.”
Selûna is now playing gigs wherever they can around Austin, from house shows in West Campus to small bars and clubs around the city, finding inspiration from each and every show. “We go to all these shows with these bands playing, and we watch these bands, and we see what works and what people are liking . . . It’s cool to be on the forefront of things, you know, music going somewhere before it comes out and before it becomes something.”
Something that Pokrifcsak touched on is how Austin has impacted his band and how he wants to honor the legacy of the musicians that came before him. “One musician I really respected [was] Willie Nelson . . . He didn’t fit in Nashville, so he moved to Austin. I want to honor the musicians I love that came out here.”
In the Shade
“It’s one of the largest music scenes in Texas, if not the largest . . . but it’s a lot smaller than you’d think.”
Something that makes Austin stand out from other music scenes is the diversity of types of music you hear coming out of the city. This was very much showcased at a Battle of the Bands that was hosted at Hole in the Wall in March of 2026. The show consisted of eight bands ranging from alternative rock, metal, and pop punk, one of which was In the Shade, a hard rock band who was looking to bring their heavier sound to the Austin music scene.
In the Shade was formed by singer Ben Villasana and bass guitarist Paul Snow, who grew up playing music together in Corpus Christi. When Snow moved to Austin, Villasana followed him, and they eventually found a guitarist and drummer in Austin, and the band was complete.
When the band got their start, they realized that Austin was not the small town they grew up in, and they saw that as an opportunity to perform as much as they could. Snow explains “There’s a lot of infrastructure in Austin, and there’s a lot of shows available to play, which you kind of take for granted if you go back to a place like Corpus, where we’re from . . . Austin just has been geared for that for so long. It's really, really nice.”
While the Austin music scene is very large, the community is very small, which helped the band find bills to get on. “Everyone kind of knows each other, at least through one direction or another,” Snow states.
As the band was gearing up for their performance at the Battle of the Bands at Hole in the Wall, they reflected on the history of the Austin music scene and the musicians that came before them who paved the way for up and coming artists to thrive. “I think everybody before us did it because they had something to say, and I feel like we’re doing it for the same reasons,” Villasana says. He adds one final statement: "Playing at a lot of the venues in Austin, you’re playing on stages that some of your favorite acts have probably passed through . . . so standing on the same stage and having your feet on it, it’s really a cool experience.”