The South by Southwest music festival, now in its 25th year, is stuffed with more bands than any human can possibly hope to see in five short days.

You could try wrapping your ears around the unofficial SXSW torrent — a 6.58-GB download jammed with more than 1,000 songs — or you cold cut to the chase with Wired.com's shortlist of influential and newcomer noisemakers worth checking out.

Spanning the sonic signatures of art, rock, soul, punk, gaze, hip-hop and pop, our SXSW music picks have either made a healthy impact already or are poised to at the conference, which runs Wednesday through Sunday in Austin, Texas.

We asked each of them to explain why SXSW-goers should check them out over the hundreds of other acts playing this week and got some free downloads to help them make their case. We also asked who else they're interested in seeing at the festival.

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Sonic signature: U.K.- and Brooklyn-based Eclectic Method's Jonny Wilson, Ian Edgar and Geoff Gamlen are multimedia masters of the highest order, who splice and dice disparate, kinetic beats, samples and clips and feed them through a next-gen sound system that can shake an entire city.

"We remix media for a dance floor," Wilson told Wired.com. "It's a party but you'll see stuff like Tim & Eric go up against the latest Charlie Sheen outburst over dubstep. It's different every night, because we make it up every night, and pull what's happening now back to when video was first invented."

Now appearing: Method's latest single "Outta Sight," with Public Enemy's legendary hard rhymer Chuck D, premiered last week, and its spoof of the batshit Sheen is viewable below. But the group's live set is an unclassifiable good time, and is at full-strength in SXSW, where Eclectic Method will be soundtracking parties, as well as playing standalone showcases Thursday night at the Austin Music Hall and more.

See also: "Diplo," said Wilson. "Also, we love SXSW's interactive week as well as drinking and catching up with Austin friends we only see once or twice a year."

Image courtesy Boris Draschoff