Steel Panther stride onstage around 1 A.M. at La Zona Rosa on the second night of Austin, Texas' annual South by Southwest music festival. The mock-metal band's joke isn't subtle: four guys with poodle hair and spandex pants performing foul-mouthed odes to fat girls, Asian hookers, and the primacy of heavy metal.

Listening to Grizzly Bear's sepia-toned fantasias, you could easily imagine the men who make them spending their leisure time perusing dusty daguerreotypes or promenading down moonlit cobblestone streets. Bowling? Not so much.

What was the last concert you went to?
I saw the Arcade Fire and LCD Soundsystem at the Hollywood Bowl last summer. I don't mean to be the douche bag that says, "The Arcade Fire were transporting!" But they were transporting. And I was only there because I have a big crush on [LCD's] James Murphy, but I was like, "I can get behind this 116-member-band thing."

[Editor's note: For our May issue's summer festival section, SPIN spoke with a number of artists on the festival circuit, from Gaslight Anthem and Metric to Doves and Jane's Addiction. Among them is neo-soul songstress Erykah Badu. Here, she tells us about her favorite moments backstage and waxes on music's power to bring people together.

"Has anyone seen Brent?" It's 1:30 on a cold, rainy Friday afternoon in late February. The members of Mastodon had planned on meeting a half-hour ago at El Myr, a colorful, run-down Mexican cantina that serves as unofficial HQ for the band here in their hometown of Atlanta.

You shouldn't go to the churro stand during our set because...
"You're going to see something you probably won't see from the other bands -- if you have any interest in a kind of live soul revue mixed with punk rock, that's the ticket. We didn't invent it; we're just carrying on a tradition that's been left on the wayside for 20 years."