This year, more than any other, I have managed to take a much larger bite out of the SXSW sample MP3 files. I’ve filtered through a lot of bad tunes to put together a couple 15-song playlists for those with fewer masochistic tendencies.

This first list has some quirky pop music and pretty upbeat songs from Japan, Texas, Dublin, Liverpool, Brazil, Vancouver, New York, LA, Malaga, and a wide variety of popularity according to how much last.fm knows of them, at least. One of these bands has barely 300 track plays on last.fm, and one has nearly two million …

1. Terminal Boredom – The Cute Lepers
2. All My Love For You – The Emeralds
3. It’s Not About What I Want (It’s What You Got) – The Woggles
4. B-Level Motion – Bo-Peep
5. My Best Friend’s Hot – The Dollyrots
6. Winona – Totally Michael
7. Simple Girlz – Dressy Bessy
8. She Creatures Invade – The She Creatures
9. You Got Me Into This, Now You Get Me Out – The Evaporators
10. Lend Me Your Face – Fight Like Apes
11. I Go I Go I Go – Wave Machines
12. Safety In Numbers – The Wax Museums
13. Shoot The Little Sister – Vinil Laranja
14. Energy Never Disappears, Only Gets Transformed – Tom Cary
15. This Is Our Perfect Crime – The Von Bondies

Stream this playlist (M3U playlist)

Download .zip file (45MB) of these 15 songs or get the 5+GB torrent of all the SXSW 2009 MP3 files.

UPDATE: Check out part 2 of the Listening Party