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The music festival South By Southwest--Austin, Texas's four-day spree of beer, BBQ, and bands (although not necessarily in that exact order)--kicked off today, and I of course wasted no time indulging in all three B's, hightailing it directly from the Austin airport to my first party of the day over at Maggie Mae's on 6th Street. But ironically that beer bash was hosted by Spaceland, a rock club in my own native L.A.--so there I was, hundreds of miles from my usual turf, still running into the same Angeleno scenesters that I socialize with on a near-nightly basis back home.

But there was one gaggle of exotic party guests, who'd traveled all the way from Denmark to entertain the Maggie Mae's masses, and that was the Asteroids Galaxy Tour. Best known in America so far for their maddeningly catchy single "Around The Bend," as heard in a recent iPod Touch commercial, AGT certainly stood out from the rest of the skinny-jeaned, fringe-haircutted bands playing the Spaceland party. Dressed in early-'90 retrowear (think Jesus Jones/Deee-Lite/Information Society club-kid attire) and mixing up new-jack R&B with twee indie jangle in a most peculiar and most wonderful way, their fun and funky-fresh set was a perfect kickoff to SXSW.

Of course, I had to get to know these great Danes (whose sure-to-be-juicy debut album, Fruit, comes out in America this May) a little better. So I took the two main Asteroids, Mette Lindberg and Lars Iversen, around the bend--or, more specifically, over to a semi-quiet side street off 6th. (There's no such thing as a totally quiet side street in downtown Austin, as this chaotic clip makes readily apparent.) There we chatted about their impression of Texas and America in general, their big break courtesy of iPod, their unexpected R&B influences, the other SXSW bands they'll be seeing in between their booked-solid festival appearances, and--perhaps most importantly--whether or not they've actually ever played Asteroids.

Game on: