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

One of the best of Austin’s psych rock contingent and our Artist of the Month earlier this year, The Halfways, have released a neat little single this month that goes by the ominous name “Not All Are to Be Trusted.” Tagged with the much less ominous “SpaaaceRock” on SoundCloud, this new jam oozes out of the speakers with a feel-good, chill-out vibe that’s much more about fun and kicking it to relaxing psychy-goodness than the title might suggest. This is top-notch stuff from a band we’d expect nothing less of, and you can get in on the party right below.

Well y’all, the bell rung on the epic bout that was our last Artist of the Month poll about a week ago, and heavyweight hip-hoppers LNS Crew found themselves the last men standing in the ring to take the title. Many congrats to LNS on their win!

For this next bout, we’ve got a hip-hopless roster for the first time in a while, with a singer-songwriter-producer, two psych bands and some damn fine Austin punk slugging it out between the virtual ropes for the completely imaginary but nonetheless glorious Deli Austin Weekly Champion Belt.

We’ll do a deeper post on each of these guys over the course of the contest, but for now, here’s a little on our current contenders and why they particularly caught our ear this month:

Abram Shook

Sound: Indie singer-songwriter with quite high production value

Qualifications: Lovely little single “Understood” and its equally pleasurable music video were just released as a preview to Shook’s sophomore album and are making noise around town, earning Shook KUTX’s Artist of the Month. Perhaps more importantly, recent photos of Shook reveal that he is almost definitely Austin’s premier wizard in training, what with that peppery hair/beard combo.

The Halfways

Sound: Psych pop straight out of the era that birthed it, but with a dab of the new post-Fleet Foxes psych sound

Qualifications: A string of recent shows coupled to new output from the band, who has been doing hard work in the studio. Track “I Don’t Mind” bodes quite well for the rest of the new stuff coming from this group, which has certainly become a pillar of the ATX psych scene in the last couple of years.

THREE BONES

Sound: Psych blues with soul to spare and a riveting lead singer/lead guitarist duo in Victoria de Benedicty and Dalt Jacob

Qualifications: Only one of the oddest, strongest, 60s-est music video ever to come out of the local psych scene, plus the promise of more music and some big-time shows (including one with fellow nominees The Halfways at Scoot Inn not long ago). The vid for triumphant, soul-packed track “Hold On to Ya” is exactly what you want out of retro psych, in that its influences are obvious (that projection is pure 60s), but it’s very self-aware and thoroughly fun. These dudes also just won the John Lennon Songwriting Contest for a Valentine’s Day love song for other new track “Love is the Only Way,” which is some pretty major shit.

Xetas

Sound: Punch-em-up, no stops, unfuckwitable contemporary punk

Qualifications: This is a band everyone in Austin should know, even though they themselves probably don’t give a shit if you do or don’t. This is as close as Austin gets to a supergroup, with each member an undoubted veteran of the Austin music thing, but even though we’d nominate these guys just about anytime for the quality shit they’ve consistently been producing in their relatively short time together, they particularly make the cut for this month’s poll on the utter, pounding strength of their new single “The Point,” released as a lead up to soon-to-come LP “The Redeemer.” They also just wrapped one big-ass, quick-ass tour all over the nation, which is more’n enough to get them the nod in our poll this month.