While the streets of Austin overflow with badge-bearing, slightly woozy attendees shuffling from party to band showcase to party, the world still turns. And the Y! Music team has been working feverishly behind the scenes to spotlight some of this year's top talent via exclusive interviews and performances we'll soon be unveiling.

This year a dedicated workforce of Y!-related humans set up at the Gibson Show Room, a fabulous instrument-laden studio workspace crammed with all manner of Gibson guitars, located a few miles south of downtown Austin. The crew set up shop there Wednesday in preparation for two consecutive days of shooting, and by Thursday morning a steady stream of artists poured in.

The process: Artist A would come into Studio 1, set up for an intimate, low-key performance (studio logistics precluded the bookings of certain types of performances due to technical limitations, meaning that rap and the Blue Cheer were definite no-no's), perform two songs twice, then shuffle off

This year's lineup for the normally rock/country/folk-centric South By Southwest fest offered more hip-hop than possibly any previous year--with such urban music luminaries as Ice Cube, David Banner, Bun B, Pharrell Williams, GZA, the Clipse, Dizzee Rascal, 2 Live Crew, and Talib Kweli spitting rhymes at various showcases within spitting distance of each other across Austin.

But when it came to appealing to the convention's electrorock-obsessed indie crowd, perhaps no other SXSW '08 rapper had such a finger on the proverbial pulse as did that impeccably manicured crossover MC, Kid Sister.

This Kanye West-endorsed, female-friendly Chi-Town rapstress behind the beauty-salon anthem "Pro Nails" (and the acrylic-tipped star of the greatest music video ever) appeared Friday night at Emo's...where, excitingly, clubbers of presumably either gender could take advantage of complimentary pre-show manicures:

And on a bill alongside the Clipse and the Cool Kids, Kid Sister easily proved she can

It was a sweltering 92 degrees at South By Southwest on Friday--an almost unheard of temperature for Austin in March, and almost 20 degrees hotter than it was on Thursday. But did this crazy Coachella-like climate deter Britain's best-dressed baby band, Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong, from getting all dolled up in their usual autumnal haberdashery?

Of course not. It's pretty hard to imagine these fashionably pasty Londoners ever trading in their trademark scarves, vests, and suit jackets for cargo shorts and flip-flops.

Yes, JL&TJJJ beat the heat in style, never letting fans see 'em sweat (they don't sweat, they glisten), and never running out of steam, when they made their U.S. debut at the Mercury Records party on Friday afternoon. Check out their red-hot live party pics below, and see the Mercury rising indeed:

Pharrell Williams' solo album didn't exactly set the charts on fire. And Ride Or Die, the sophomore effort by the hip-hop renaissance man's side band N.E.R.D., failed to match the critical or commercial success of N.E.R.D.'s Shortlist prize-winning debut, In Search Of. But judging from the wild reaction Pharrell and N.E.R.D. received when premiering new material at their private South By Southwest show Thursday night, their forthcoming third album is going to be a solid hit.

Yes, despite going on more than an hour late, N.E.R.D. still managed to win over their audience, performing hard-charging new tunes (including hot single "Everyone Nose," a salute to all the "women waiting in line for the bathroom") as well as older numbers like the finale "She Wants To Move" (during which Pharrell yanked several lovely and willing young ladies onstage for a dance-off).

Check out the pics below to witness the revenge of the N.E.R.D.:

The South By Southwest 2008 lineup features the usual crop of hipster indie bands, but many of them probably wouldn't be around today if it wasn't for this year's SXSW keynote speaker, Velvet Underground veteran Lou Reed. Because as Brian Eno once famously stated, while not many people bought the Velvets' debut album at the time of its release, everyone that did buy it seemed to form a band.

So what better way to celebrate Lou's legacy than with a tribute showcase featuring many of the Velvet Underground's esteemed successors? On Thursday, March 13, that's exactly what went down at Austin's Fader Fort, with two hours of live Lou music as interpreted by such indie darlings as Dr. Dog (whom Lou praised earlier during his keynote Q&A), Mark Kozelek of the Red House Painters, Joseph Arthur, and My Morning Jacket.

Yo La Tengo (pictured above) seemed especially qualified to participate given that they actually portrayed the Velvet Underground in the 1996 movie I Shot Andy Warhol, and their

Every SXSW has had its great Brit hopes. In 2007, it was Amy Winehouse, the Fratellis, and Mika. 2006 brought us Editors, the Arctic Monkeys, and KT Tunstall. In 2005, it was Bloc Party, the Futureheads, and Kasabian. 2004 was all about Franz Ferdinand. As you can see, not all of these acts enjoyed the same level of post-South By Southwest success in America--at least in the commercial sense.

Well, two of the British buzz biggies for SXSW 2008 are Lightspeed Champion and the Ting Tings, both of whom played Wednesday night--though luckily at different, relatively adjacent venues and in non-conflicting timeslots, thus making the evening's gig schedule easily organizable for the festival's many attending Anglophiles.

Lightspeed Champion--aka Devonte Hynes, the former Test Icicles dance/punk/metal rocker who radically reinvented himself as a Russian-hatted folkie and recorded his debut album in Nebraska with Saddle Creek Records' resident producer, Mike Mogis--performed first, over at

Some people may think that going to see SXSW 2008 keynote speaker Daryl Hall perform at South By Southwest is some sort of indie-ironic inside joke. Like, "Ha ha, won't it be funny to see that old has-been who sang 'Private Eyes'?"

But I'm dead serious when I tell you Daryl Hall is cooler than pretty much any skinny-jeaned, hoodie-shrouded band du jour playing SXSW this year.

There's a reason why the Gym Class Heroes named their most recent trek the "Daryl Hall For President '07 Tour" and are working on a Hall & Oates mashup album. Or why Hall & Oates' "I Can't Go For That" has been sampled in about 4,987 hip-hop songs. Or why Daryl gets people like KT Tunstall and (of course) Gym Class Heroes MC Travis McCoy to guest on his online music/talk show, Live From Daryl's House.

It's because Hall & Oates--and by association, the duo's chief songwriter, Daryl--are just plain friggin' cool. No joke.

Never was this more clear than when Daryl performed a free, 40-minute concert at the Austin

Wednesday was day one of South By Southwest--the key word being "day." See, SXSW isn't really about the evening's sanctioned showcases; it's all about the daytime parties that occur all over downtown Austin. Seriously, it's practically impossible to walk two feet down 6th Street without stumbling over a loaded barbeque grill, an overflowing keg of Shiner Bock brew, or a next-big-thing band with perfect Lego hair and impossibly high cheekbones.

Yes, by the time the sun actually sets, conventioneers have already spent so many hours gorging on beer, BBQ, and bands, bands, bands, that the regular evening SXSW shows almost seem anti-climactic.

The Wednesday plane conveying the Yahoo! Music staffers deep in to the heart of Texas was unfortunately delayed, but luckily with daylight savings time now in effect, we were still able to take advantage of a couple crucial party hours in the Southern sunshine. (FYI, the pic above is of me and Dan Martin, the Brit music scribe who pens Yahoo!'s