ACL Is for the Girls: The Women of Indie at ACL Weekend Two
Spanning the many subgenres of indie, these five women acts captivated the crowd at Weekend Two of the Austin City Limits Music Festival.
Written by Janie Bickerton
Photos courtesy of Josh Guerra, Mckenna Sefcik, Ashley Osborn, Chad Wadsworth, and Taylor Regulski
ACL has consistently highlighted women in their recent lineups, and this year, indie women take center stage. Refusing to box themselves into one style or one sound, these five women sprinkled their sets with alternative-indie, singer-songwriter, alt-rock, and jazz elements, showing the Austin crowd that the future of music is female.
Spill Tab
Photo courtesy of Josh Guerra
Los Angeles singer Claire Chicha, better known as Spill Tab, opened the Miller Lite Stage with her punctual 1:30 p.m. set on Friday, Oct. 10. Psychedelic colors swirled on the screen behind Chicha as she owned the stage in jorts, a white tank, ruby red cowboy boots, and her signature split-dyed hair. The booming techno music that blared as Chicha and her band entered the stage diluted into the gritty, percussion-heavy track “Window,” starting her set with an unmistakable alternative-rock sound. “Austin, are we feeling warmed up?” the singer punned to a crowd being sprayed with water by security in the blazing sun. Spill Tab quickly switched the mood with her 2020 French song “Calvaire,” made “a little sexier” with dreamy keys, concluding the romance language song. After some slow songs and hydration checks, Spill Tab let her keyboardist Austin Corona shine on “Athlete” as she gave emphatic, short breaths to the mic to complement the groovy, video-game-like keys. She immediately jumped into the high-energy track “Velcro” to return the set to rock infusions, exasperatedly singing, “How to use my head without my mouth” and finishing the track in a guitar battle with her bassist, her split-dyed hair covering her face. Prefaced as a breakup song — like most of her new album, Angie — “Hold Me” entranced the crowd with its instrumentation ready for a jazz club and Chicha’s small hand motions emphasizing the reflective, regretful lyrics. Spill Tab showed the most of her range with “by Design,” starting the song with a vocal mod on her microphone and ending with simple acoustic guitar. After playing a slow unreleased song about hoping for clarity in a relationship on the brink of starting or ending, she transitioned into her 2020 essentially indie hit “Cotton Candy,” during which she explored the stage and gave her drummer a hug while he played. As the catchy percussion and fast-paced strings of “CRÈME BRÛLÉE!” permeated the heat, the audience could not help but clap along to Spill Tab’s biggest hit. Despite an early set time and glitchy screens, Spill Tab successfully showed Austin that her sound knows no bounds.
Jensen McRae
Photo by Mckenna Sefcik
Next to play the Miller Lite Stage was Jensen McRae, a Californian singer-songwriter known for her diaristic lyrics and entrancing vocal range. McRae’s all-male band walked nonchalantly onto the stage, causing little notice from the crowd until a goodnight voicemail from a past lover played, prompting the singer to casually meet the center mic stand and begin her set with “The Rearranger.” The opening track from her new album I Don’t Know How But They Found Me! immediately acquainted the crowd with McRae’s vocal prowess, complete with The Cranberries-esque vocal flips and effortless runs. McRae shed her solitary focus on the music to share her personality with the crowd, quipping, “If you’ve ever dated a Scorpio moon, you may be entitled to financial compensation” to introduce “Mother Wound,” during which she emphasized “You'd been the ‘good guy’ for a little too long” with hand quotes. She then played her most popular track from 2022, “My Ego Dies at the End,” a deeply emotional song that McRae performed a bit less passionately than her original recording, as if she had surmounted the emotional hurdle but was still ready to give a moving performance. She prefaced her next song, “Good Legs,” as a remnant of a “one month situationship,” which prompted the crowd to laugh and then sway to the beat, which even McRae couldn’t stop from doing herself. McRae then cheekily smiled before the familiar opening notes for her rendition of Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black” began, a highlight of her set filled with her signature lower register and runs that would have made Winehouse proud. The singer then called out the “eldest daughters” and “recovering overachievers” in the audience and challenged them to sing the expletive the loudest in her next song, “Let Me Be Wrong,” smiling as the crowd yelled, “Fuck! Those girls got everything.” McRae began her encore with “I Don’t Do Drugs,” her most emotionally-packed performance of the set which ended with McRae on a vocally-modded microphone. The singer-songwriter ended her set a few minutes early by having fun with her performance of “Massachusetts,” laughing during the lines, “When someone asks me who's my favorite Batman / I'll think of you and say, ‘Christian Bale’” and running across the stage during the bridge. McRae mellowed afterwards and ‘cheers’ed the crowd goodbye with her water, leaving ACL in wonder of her perfect balance of humor and artistic focus.
Olivia Dean
When Olivia Dean graced the American Express stage for her 2:30 p.m. Saturday set, the audience knew they were in for an hour of unmistakable joy. Dean, a pop-soul singer-songwriter from London, ran out to the mic stand for her breakout hit “Nice to Each Other,” energetically side-stepping to the tune in her white kitten heels and striped bubble dress, her blowout flowing like an ‘80s music video. She then strutted the stage ebulliently during her 2019 song “Ok Love You Bye,” and grabbed her acoustic guitar for “Time,” a jazz-R&B song that exhibited Dean’s range as she went up an octave with pointed passion. Trading her Stanley cup for a bottle of beer, Dean became so lost in the synergy of electric guitar and trumpets in “Danger” that she spilled her beer. She introduced “Lady Lady” as a song “about Mother Nature … and trusting in its plan for you,” using a lemon-shaped shaker but ultimately letting her brass band shine in the outro. Next came “Let Alone the One You Love,” during which she sneered in the chorus, feeling every word of “And if you knew me at all / You wouldn't try to keep me small,” with a cadence that placed Dean in the UK hall of singer-songwriters next to Adele. Prefaced as a song about “girls’ toilets,” “Ladies Room” showed the fullness of what Dean’s music could be, as she gave space for guitar and horns solos and used a wooden guiro to keep the beat. Dean focused more on vocals for the happy-go-lucky “So Easy to Fall in Love” with entrancing harmonies, but she then dampened the mood with “The Hardest Part,” a break-up song. The highlight of her set was “Carmen,” a song addressed to her grandmother, who immigrated to England from the Caribbean at 18. “These people deserve to be celebrated,” she said, dedicating the song to any immigrant families in the crowd. The emotional yet hopeful song mixed sweat with tears at Zilker Park, as the audience could feel Dean’s love emanating from the stage. Ending with “Man I Need” and “Dive,” Dean finished her set with high energy, emphasizing the collaborative effort of live performances by giving each cowboy hat-wearing band member their moment to shine. With a final hair flip, Dean cutesily ran off the stage, leaving the audience with the memory of her connective and joyful radiance.
Japanese Breakfast
Nautical accoutrements and rolling smoke dotted the Beatbox stage as Michelle Zauner, the frontwoman of indie-rock band Japanese Breakfast, walked out at 7:30 p.m. with a glass of red wine ready to kick up the energy with “Paprika.” Animated confetti and birds flew behind her as she banged a floral gong to the beat of the chorus, unabashedly dancing in her blue ruffle dress, space buns, and glossy Doc Martens. Lo-fi filled the evening air to begin “Road Head,” complete with impressively sustained high notes from Zauner before she tapped on the synthesizer and let her saxophonist fizzle out the song. Zauner smiled and switched to electric guitar for “Honey Water” as red lights doused the stage to visualize the song’s sultry rock sound. She then slowed down the energy for a familiar slow song from her 2021 album Jubilee, “Kokomo, IN,” a cute rural city animation rolling behind her as she harmonized with her drummer Craig Hendrix. Zauner then welcomed the crowd to “The Melancholy Inn,” the section of the stage with the piano and drums, where she sat to sing what she deemed a “murder ballad”: “Men in Bars,” a track from her latest album featuring actor Jeff Bridges, whose verse Hendrix handled live. Feeling melancholy about it being the last stop of her 2025 tour, Zauner mentioned Austin was the city “where this band really started” at SXSW nearly 10 years ago, a reflective moment as she was headlining the Beatbox stage. The frontwoman turned around to watch pictures of her mother, who died of cancer shortly after Zauner and her guitarist Peter Bradley’s wedding, on the screen while singing, “What's this place if you're not here?” in “The Body Is a Blade.” After posing in her clamshell during “Posing in Bondage,” the crowd yelled as the opening notes of her biggest track, “Be Sweet,” played, the catchy chorus connecting the crowd. Japanese Breakfast then took it to 2016 with its early hit, “Everybody Wants to Love You,” the audience chanting the chorus as animated fireworks and rainbow lights brought the exuberant song to life. Japanese Breakfast closed the set with a drawn-out rendition of “Diving Woman,” a red underwater scene tying together the nautical scene as Zauner headbutted her husband while he gave the final strums of the set. Immersed in her craft and interested in making the crowd one with the music, Zauner gave a career-spanning performance showing many sides — sappy, sensual, sad — to the Austin crowd.
Wet Leg
Smoke permeated the American Express stage on Sunday afternoon to welcome Wet Leg’s frontwoman Rhian Teasdale, facing her band to show off her orange bow on her metallic gold booty shorts. Hitting a bodybuilding pose before piercing Zilker Park with the vindictive “catch these fists,” Teasdale cemented her powerful stage presence by repeatedly wetting her pink hair throughout the set. The band, hailing from the Isle of Wight in England, set the tone with the fast-paced “Wet Dream,” its most popular song, as Teasdale cheekily smiled to the final lyric, “Let’s begin.” After the UFO sounds of “Being in Love,” Teasdale and her original duo partner Hester Chambers faced each other in a battle of guitars during “Oh No,” Teasdale on a transparent green electric guitar and Chambers on a silver-starred guitar with a Palestinian flag sticker. The band then challenged Austin to give their loudest scream during “Ur Mum,” the drummer Henry Holmes easily winning by repeatedly giving a blood-curdling scream. A video of an angry goblin’s eyes looped on the screen as the previously unassuming Chambers shined on “u and me at home.” The crowd couldn’t help but head bob during the heavy metal chorus of “pillow talk,” but then Wet Leg slowed it down with the indie “davina mccall,” sweetly singing, “Fetch you from the station, never gonna let you go / It's that kinda love.” Teasdale resumed the strength poses while swaying her hips during “jennifer’s body,” returning the set to its confident, playful rock sound with the band’s first release, “Chaise Longue.” Teasdale delivered the playful lyrics matter-of-factly, raising her voice selectively to match the energy of the jumping audience, asking “Excuse me?” to the audience’s response, “What!” A memorable moment from the set, Teasdale seductively sang into a ruby-red dial phone and wrapped herself in its cord during “CPR,” the opener to Wet Leg’s 2025 album moisturizer. The group wrapped up its set with the early 2000s rock sound of “mangetout,” the band chanting “Get lost forever” as Teasdale got close to the fan at her feet to dry her hair. Teasdale immediately left the stage after the song, leaving bassist Ellis Durand, wearing a shirt with the simple bolded word “crap,” to bid the crowd adieu. With goblins and wet hair, screaming and crawling, Wet Leg’s idiosyncratic indie-rock performance left ACL in awe of its wonderful weirdness.