HotWax, Chiedu Oraka and Divorce lead line up for Best Fit's SXSW party

The line-up – supported by our friends at Amuse and featuring some of the most exciting names playing the annual showcase festival – runs from 8pm on Friday, 15 March at the Swan Dive Patio on Red River Street.

Teenage punk powerhouse HotWax (pictured above, lead image) are ripping up the template and ripping up stages and festivals in the UK and beyond. Forging post-punk, grunge and alternative rock, Tallulah, Lola and Alfie have created a rarified live energy and sound that has made them one of 2024’s most hyped new bands and saw them headline Best Fit’s Five Day Forecast last month.

Born from the belly of the beast in Hull's council estates, Chiedu Oraka's bars are unflinching social poetry which portray the Black, working-class experience from the frontlines of the north - with lashings of its colourful slang for good measure.

A young woman with heart and soul, Victoria Bigelow’s moody yet hopeful music has drawn comparisons with Weyes Blood, Angel Olsen, and Mazzy Star, but it’s her life, her voice, and her honesty, that gives her a sound all of her own. Telling stories of heartbreak, adversity and bittersweet hope, Bigelow takes love, loss, and longing, and transforms them into music that speaks to the heart of the modern world.

Nottingham indie heavyweights Divorce have developed quite the reputation over the last twelve months, becoming mainstays on BBC Radio 1 and BBC 6 Music. The band - who once described themselves as “Wilco meets Abba” - were another headliner at Best Fit’s Five Day Forecast last month, and have also appeared alongside 86TV’s, Lime Garden, The Vaccines, Everything Everything and Pip Blom.

Waterbaby – aka 24-year-old Stockholm born Kendra Egerbladh – makes rhapsodic, techno-pastoral bedroom pop that fizzes with the tiny nuances of love. The Sub Pop-signed Stockholm-based artist dropped her debut EP – titled FOAM – last summer and has won acclaim from the New York Times, The Guardian, FADER and Brooklyn Vegan

Surviving Tampa Bay, Florida, DBMK now independently makes their unique and innovative indie-pop sound stationed in New York City. Singer Kyle produces deeply personal lyrics and a vocal presence from a loaded pallet of both delicate falsetto and heavy prince-inspired screams while Colton is nimble on the drums; downright beating the shit out of his instrument.