While many things in the city of Austin have been placed on hold because of the ongoing pandemic, The Cuckoo's have released a bit of hope for us all, in the form of a new video for their song "I'll Be Ur Tramp". The Cuckoo's have been a staple among band names, in the Austin live music scene for a few years now. Front man Kenneth Frost, along with his motley crew of band mates, Dave North, Eric Ross, and Cole Koenning offer up a chemistry that is impossible to ignore within the electrifying almost synth pop originality of the music they have created and released, untamed and unapologetically, into the streets and ears of both local and national fans.

 "I'll Be Ur Tramp" is the band's first video release for their upcoming EP "Honeymoon Phases", with no set release date, as off yet. Both song and album come after the fantastic success of "I Hate Love", the bands first self titled album. Songs like "Lady Boy" and "Why Don't You Call Me Anymore" give a funky twist on familiar inspirations from bands like The Talking Heads and Pink Floyd, while paying tribute to artists such as David Bowie.

"A funky soulmate diddy about finding a partner in crime to walk through life with," Kenneth tells me, is the feel he was going for with writing " I'll Be Ur Tramp". The video is simple yet enticing, inviting you to stay and watch the eccentric frontman dance and sing alone next an old TV flickering clips from previous Cuckoo's music videos and live performances. Frost also conceived and directed the video himself, proving he's more than just a pretty voice wielding a keytar!

With the success of their last album, there has been pressure to produce equally ear catching tunes and barbed hooks with new music for the band. The Cuckoo's don't seem to be letting the pressure get to them, and keep on hammering out smooth and funky acid pop hits like "I'll Be Ur Tramp". If anything is apparent, it's that this band is here to stay, and they are going to keep putting out songs and videos that make you feel good and remind us all that "it's ok to be a little sexy and dirty sometimes."

-Michael Lee

In many ways musical exploration seems to mirror global exploration in that most of of the world has been charted and mapped. Some might even go so far as to say the heady days of musical experimentation which figured so prominently in the 1960’s has sunk into a digital bog of repetitive mimicry. Like Sir Earnest Shackleton and Colonel Percy Fawcett before them the Cuckoos are showing the world that the spirit of adventure, exploration, and experimentation are very much alive and well. This is nowhere more evident than the Cuckoos recent collaboration with Alan Salomon on a remix of “Get It On”.
    The Cuckoos psychedelic rock DNA (think The Doors and Pink Floyd) has been written about ad infinitum, however the recent treatment of "Get It On" speaks volumes about the progressive spirit of the band. While it is easy to channel past and contemporary sounds, the Cuckoos have found a way to marry the two and that requires substantial courage and creativity. Make sure to check out the "Get It On" remix and keep an eye out for the future musical explorations of the Cuckoos.

-Cory Huennekens

Whew boy y’all! The Readers’ Poll for the 2015 Austin Deli Artist of the Year contest has done gone and finished, and what a hell of a thing it was. We deeply appreciate all of the nominated artists and the fans taking the time to put your votes in, and we think the results are pretty darn interesting.

1. Wonderbitch

Wonderbitch takes the whole shebang for the Readers’ Poll after mobilizing their fan base, which is obviously ravenous for the hard prog-psych riffs and heady concepts this group offers up. Wonderbitch made a big splash on the scene in 2015 with their eponymous record, and it’s obvious that it hit big with the fans from the way they voted their little clicking fingers off for the group.

2. The Cuckoos

Young psych rockers dominate this list, and none are younger or of a purer old-school psych sound than The Cuckoos. A very new band, big things loom in the future for this Doors-esque act that elicited some truly impassioned commenting from fans on their poll page. It was close there for a while, but a steady push of voting bolstered by a late-game surge saw The Cuckoos take the crown in the Psych Rock category this year.

3. Daniel Eyes & The Vibes

Few bands have shot to local glory as quickly as Daniel Eyes & The Vibes, whose first EP is barely a month old but who already have a huge fan base in the city. Riding some intense hype from live shows and early singles, this true rock ‘n roll band has stormed through Austin this Winter, and it’s very likely you’ll be hearing their name no matter the season for a while to come.

4. The Bishops

The all-family silky smooth hip-hop act The Bishops has barely been around in its current form, but the three members each have a damned extensive catalog of top notch music as solo artists and in collaborations, often with each other. They’ve barely been together officially as a named trio, but heads around the city and far beyond have had the beats and the bars from these kids on repeat for a while. This group is pretty much destined to hit it big- they almost certainly have by far the most listens on SoundCloud across their four accounts out of any of our nominees bar none)- so if you voted for them here, feel proud of yourself for getting in on the ground floor with one of the city, and the nation’s, most exciting young groups.

5. Kev Bev & the Woodland Creatures

Apparently the answer in fair ole Austin to that timeless musical question, “Who wants the funk?” is “We want the funk.” Welp, it's a good thing then that Kev Bev & the Woodland Creatures are here to turn this mother out with their big funk jams. Turning out big time is also what their fans did to the Hip Hop + Funk poll, where they slid in just barely behind newcomers The Bishops to take second in that poll and fifth overall. In terms of just straight-up fun music, Kev Bev et al. are second to none in the city, however, nor do they slack on the number of members front. This is the kind of band that almost needs to be seen live to really know them, and luckily for us all, that’s an opportunity Kev Bev & The Woodland Creatures provide in spades to the city of Austin.

6. The Halfways

The Halfways found themselves in a hell of a contest against upstarts The Cuckoos in the Psychcategory, and it’s not a damn little piece of surprising to us that they made our top 6 after the year they’ve had. Excellent, frequent shows, a few dead-on newpsych singles and one of the best-received and more critically acclaimed records in the city with EP The Halfways were what led this band to dominance in the burgeoning Austin psych scene this year, but in reality, it’s the hazy, dreamworld sound they cull from the ether to play in your ears like a hippy in a good sunny field that make them one of the top acts working in Austin today.

Honorable Mention: The Cover Letter, Sophia Johnson, Annabelle Chairlegs

Once again: enormous and buttery thanks to all of the acts and bands who promoted the poll, and to all of you loverly fans out there with your awesome ears to hear this good stuff with and your fingers to choose what you like the best. You really da bes.

By the way, if you’re interested in the details of each poll by category and would like to see how it all went down, here are the links to each genre’s results:

ALT ROCK - FOLK ROCK - HIP HOP + FUNK - INDIE POP - INDIE ROCK - PSYCH - PUNK/METAL - ROOTS MUSIC - SINGER-SONGWRITER

Congrats to everyone who came up big in the poll, and stay tuned to this site to find out what act is our overall Deli Austin 2015 Artist of the Year. We’ll be releasing that as soon as we add the tally together for the juror votes and the Readers’ Poll combined, and we guarantee it’ll be some damn fine music.

It is Austin, after all.

The Deli Austin Staff

Morrison has risen- This is a natural thought progression upon hearing Ken Frost, lead singer of the Austin 60’s psych trio The Cuckoos, sing for the first time. Frost has a dead-on Lizard King baritone but, rather than run from comparisons to the Doors, the Cuckoos embrace it, own it, and then make it their own. The trio’s magnetism, mature sound, and youthful precociousness (Frost is the oldest in the group at 19) mean that there are many more doors of perception for these Moog-mavens to open. Here's track “Stranger in Your Eyes” from their upcoming spring full-length release that offers a tantalizing organ sound straight from 1967. The dark psych groove perfectly coalesces with Frost’s intoxicating throwback vocals for a track that's about as close as we're ever going to get to a new classic Doors track, do listen below, flower children of 2016. The Cuckoos are also a nominee for ‘Artist of the Year’ in the psych category and would love your vote, so check the polls to the right if you want to help the guys out.

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Lee Ackerley
@slackerleemusic