SXSW Tip Sheet: Colorado bands

Merriam-Webster defines Heffernan's condition as "a hereditary disease marked especially by extreme brittleness of bones and caused by defective or insufficient collagen." In laymen's terms, she has extremely fragile bones. How fragile? Well, before she turned a year old, she had broken her arm in 25 places just from moving it. Facing that sort of fragility early on both toughened Heffernan up and helped her develop a finely tuned sense of humor, as evidenced by the music she makes with her band, which also includes DJ Whitelabel, the unimonikered Isaac on drums, and Abi on sax.

A diehard hip-hop head with "Crip for Life" tattooed on her stomach, the 23-year-old MC is irresistible when she rocks the mike. When you hear her tiny voice booming on such cuts as "Party and Bullshit," spitting lines like "This is my party song/And these are my party pants/Maybe if you're lucky, I will show you my Bacardi dance/Don't stop, get it, get it/Rock with the midget," it's impossible to wipe the grin off your face.

Travis Egedy, aka Pictureplane

photo roadies

Wheelchair Sports Camp

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• South by Southwest Festival
• Kalyn Heffernan
• Travis Egedy
• Music Festivals
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

And just when you think it's all merely a party with bullshit, Heffernan kicks in some science: "I'm with Stephen and we're hawking our hair/We're in the middle of the break circle locking our chairs/'Cause in this brief history of time/Quantum gravity is mine/I eat a mike with relativity and dystrophy to spine."

Wheelchair Sports Camp: You might come for the novelty, but you'll stay for the style and the substance.

In addition to these four acts, there are a slew of other Colorado-based bands making the trek this year that are also worth keeping an eye out for, including perennial SXSW veterans like DeVotchKa, Slim Cessna's Auto Club, the Photo Atlas and other outfits such as American Tomahawk, Lola Black, the Knew, A. Tom Collins, Air Dubai, Paper Bird, Danielle Ate the Sandwich, Candy Claws, the Epilogues, Drag the River, Woodsman, Gangcharger, Flashlights, Natural Selection, Wire Faces, Caldera Lakes, Port Au Prince and Lords of Fuzz, among others.