Tegan And Sara, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis Dazzle At The mtvU Woodies

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We're finally back from Austin and home in New York City, where we're taking stock of what happened during the last 8 days of SXSW. We're going through the early stages of breakfast taco withdrawal, but watching these incredible live performances from Tegan and Sara and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis from this year's mtvU Woodies Awards is making the comedown go much smoother than anticipated.

We spent most of our Thursday in Austin last week attending the Woodies, which were held in a ginormous parking lot just southwest of the Austin Convention Center. The whole event was an exciting mix of musical genres; during the three or so hours we spent there, we saw performances from everyone from coke rap legend Pusha-T to laptop hip-popsters Timeflies, from SoCal sister act on-the-rise Haim to alt radio sister staples Tegan & Sara. Regarding the latter, the band earned deafening cheers from the primarily college-age crowd when they came out for their brief yet energetic four song perf just as the sun was going down in Austin. After opening with fan fave "Back In Your Head," they quickly yet passionately worked their way through their setlist, which closed with VH1's Plussed anthem, "Closer." (See video above.)

We wrote last week that Kendrick Lamar was one of the festival's most popular performers. We're not moving off that statement even an INCH but, that said, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis are right there with K.Dot in terms of amping up crowds. We caught them in the flesh on Saturday night at Perez Hilton & VH1 Save The Music's One Night In Austin party (more on that in a bit!), but as you can see from this killer rendition of "Can't Hold Us" from the Woodies, there might not be an act in all the land that's bringing this sort of intensity to their live performances.

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For more on the 2013 mtvU Woodies, including behind-the-scenes photo flipbooks and live performances, head over to woodies.mtv.com.

[Photo: Getty Images]