Janelle Monáe at SXSW

TheSXSWmusic festival in Austin has an absurd number of bands play every year — this time it was up to 1900. So to find the gems, needless to say, is challenging — and wonderfully refreshing if you succeed. I saw the amazingly inventive soul/funk singerJanelle Moneplay at a small club in Boston back in the fall and was determined to try to interview her for Studio 360. In the end, I got6 minutes with her backstage after her Austin Music Hall show. My story airs this weekend. Meanwhile, check out this video of her performing “Sincerely Jane.” One catch: the bass was so loud in the venue that it blew out my recording. So I synced it up with the audio from her CD. It ends up working quite nicely, and you still get a sense of her dazzling stage persona.