Artist Garotas Suecas

Hailing from São Paulo, Brazil, Garotas Suecas (Portuguese for “Swedish Girls”) are in fact a tropicalia-tinged garage-rock band composed of five boys and a girl. Or, as the band puts it, some “soulful jazzy motherfunkas & a motherfunkette.” Their sound comes complete with psychedelic organs, erratic harmonica parts, and a thick, punchy horn section. The combination of local flavor, Portuguese/English singing, and American rock influences has garnered instant comparisons to South American predecessors like Os Mutantes. Yet, despite their deliberately misleading band name, Garotas Suecas are less an abstract psychedelic whirlwind and more like pilots of a live jam session, which is part of what made them SXSW.