In the world of music, there exists a seemingly endless potential for joy, for creating authentic community, for educating, and for emotional catharsis. Perhaps music is not always thought of as such a powerful social force, but that’s exactly what it is.
Chances are that right now, if you give it some thought, you can think of at least a few great songs or artists that have used music to fight for justice, to raise awareness, to give spiritual sustenance to mass movements. Music can serve as a powerfully educational and uniquely energizing force within the context of movement-making or simply awareness-building. History, from Nigeria to Cuba, from Radio Free Europe to Vietnam, is full of examples.
In an effort to spotlight regional artists making music making a difference by responding to right here, right now, we’ve compiled a list of ten recent songs by Texas artists that will leave you yearning to make the world a better place—or at least recharge your battery for that good fight you’ve been fighting.
The list is by no means exhaustive and it certainly gives away our geographical location: over-familiarity with the San Antonio music scene is the sole reason it is over-represented here. However, we’d love to hear your recommendations! Send your favorite recent Texas protest music to editor@deceleration.com and you just might find it explored in a future follow up to this article. Viva the music of movements!
- Las Hijas de la Madre: 'Belly of the Beast' (2025)
There’s a reason Deceleration featured this Latinx feminist punk band last summer in the ramp up to their debut album. With Diatribas Punk, Las Hijas de la Madre, led by poet, teacher, performance artist, and activist Amalia Ortiz, took explicit aim at the enmeshed evils of patriarchy, racism, capitalist exploitation of earth and humans, fake “wokeness,” and colonialism—and produced an excellent album in the process. Ortiz is the unwavering engine of the band, but the belief, the unflinching battle-ready fierceness with which the other members of the band approach the project is infectious. On this track, Belly of the Beast, featuring a rapped verse delivery over a groovy Latin number that stands out from lo-fi pop-punk of the rest of the album, Ortiz reflects on manifest destiny and the harsh ironies of being exploited in a land that once belonged to you. Invoking Gloria Anzaldúa, the bridge finds the whole group singing in unison: “this land was Mexican once / indigenous always / and it will be again.” It’s exuberant.
- Mexstep with Principe Q: 'All We Got' (2025)
Like others on this list, Marco Cervantes, aka MexStep, dedicates much of his life and musical output to the struggle. A University of Texas San Antonio professor specializing in Mexican-American studies by day and critical consciousness-raising emcee by night, Cervantes has released albums worth of revolutionary music on his own and with the celebrated hip-hop group Third Root. On this track from Cervantes’ recent collaboration with Principe Q, the rapper addresses the broken promises of a system that was never designed to help certain groups. “Still in a class struggle, at odds, with bills due / every side fending for self cause cash rules / a lot of moving parts, dream broken lives taken / for moneymaking, instead of elevating the creation,” he raps at the end of the song’s final verse, before repeating the chorus that reminds us that “we are all we got” in the struggle for liberation.
- Croy and the Boys: 'Fuck I.C.E.' (2021)
The oldest track on this list, the succinctness of its message and the fiery twang of its delivery made us bend our recency parameter just a little to include “Fuck I.C.E.” by Austin alt-country mainstay Croy and the Boys. In his trademark fashion, Croy, who could be called Comrade Croy for the number of songs he’s penned about unions and gentrifiers and the working person’s struggle against wage slavery, doesn’t take to mincing words on this fiery, satirical (and appropriately accordion-drenched) track. He mocks the macho white supremacist Border Patrol agent he encounters in the song who is just looking to “round up illegals / busting nuts and feeling evil.” In the end, the singer imagines himself locked up with those awaiting deportation and laments the inhumanity of torturing folks “living here for decades / with families, rent, and bills to pay / when suddenly they’re in a deportation line.” In country music, a genre saturated with toxicity today on so many fronts, it’s refreshing to encounter an act like Croy and the Boys. You can probably guess what choice refrain makes up the better part of the chorus.
- Buttercup: 'Texas Sun, Furious Sun' (2026)
Though this track doesn’t technically come out until March 6, when San Antonio’s Buttercup releases its new full-length Send More Yellow, we are delighted the band made it possible to include a stream for our purposes here. On “Texas Sun, Furious Sun,” the long-beloved band (active since at least 2002) takes its arty indie rock in its most potently political direction yet. It starts with a clever rumination on a working artist’s relationship to climate change before taking at Governor Greg Abbott: “Governor you are such a fool,” singer Erik Sanden snarls before launching into a rapid screed juxtaposing rising temperatures with continued Texas investment in oil and roads and cars. As the song journeys on in its stream of consciousness fashion, the lyrics turn introspective as Sanden sings of standing before Van Gogh’s last painting only to get distracted by sexual urges. “We must focus on what matters / we must check what’s in our hearts,” he concludes, satisfyingly tying together the environmental justice concerns and the importance of self-criticism in life and, implicitly, activism.
- The Guilliotinas: 'I Used to Be a Fascist' (2025)
Helmed by activist/organizer and army veteran Jules Vaquera, The Guillotinas are a feminist punk band formed in protest of the military industrial complex and the evils that begat and attend it. Fittingly based in so-called “Military City USA,” the band has put out two albums over the past few years: Off with Their Heads and I Used to be a Fascist. In this, the lo-fi glam-punk title track from the latest effort, Vaquera grapples with her past as a soldier, singing “I used violence to enforce the will of my state / they taught me how to kill and they taught me how to hate.” Nevertheless, signaling her journey to critical consciousness, she later asserts “I won’t comply.” Moving from personal struggle to sage advice for the broader struggle, the song poignantly reminds us to “break the little rules right now so you’ve got the gumption to break the big ones when it counts.”
- Grupo Frackaso: 'ICE to See You' (2025)
Grupo Frackaso is known for bringing a furious punk energy to cumbia and other Latin music varieties, imagining a Chicano music future that is harvested in the past (to paraphrase the Zapatistas). This song, a rambling sort of deconstructed Tex-Mex folk meets almost flamenco affair, features a lead vocal filled with pain as the singer laments the ongoing targeting of his people by the United States government. References to “armas,” “jaualas,” and angry faces, the track paints a disturbing and unfortunately accurate picture of a people terrorized by the militant forces of a white supremacist nation at its nastiest. The almost chant-like repetition at times puts the listener in a trance of contemplation as these terrible images assault us right in the moral fiber. When pain and community concern are transmuted into art this viscerally yet tenderly, it can have more galvanizing effect than a whole stack of scholarly essays ever could.
- The Grasshopper Lies Heavy: 'Cubicle Man' (2025)
San Antonio outfit The Grasshopper Lies Heavy has, in its very essence, always been something of a commentary on decay, pain, waste, loss, and hate—even before its songs, ranging from punishing kinetic sludge to artful metal and experimental synth worship, had any words. Now that ringleader James Woodard has added vocals into the mix, we get tracks like “Cubicle Man,” which dwells darkly on the demoralizing effects of the capitalist workday in contemporary America. The song treats the alienation of wage slavery pessimistically as an inescapable force that leads to, in a perverse play on a famous labor slogan, “8 for work, 8 for rest / none for passion, pray for death.” The sheer anger that arises from realizing the truthfulness of such a sentiment is reflected in the crushing and stomping sonic palate of the song. It alone ought to be enough to catalyze entire resistance armies.
- Frontera Bugalú: 'Corazón Migrante' (2025)
Claiming both Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, but anchored in the latter, Frontera Bugalú is about as aptly named as they come. Generally, the band’s Latin-fusion music is full of celebration, remembrance, and positive vibes. And, in some ways, “Corazón Migrante” is no different. In this uptempo but dolefully delivered track, the lyric celebrates migrant workers and their “corazón gigante.” However, it also takes aim at those who enable a migrant work system (or lack thereof) that exploits and dehumanizes the most vulnerable. “Ya tiene años esta situación / no respetan trabajo ni dedicación / quieren todo bien hecho pa su vacación,” the vocal begins, which translates to “This situation has been going on for years / they don't respect work or dedication / they want everything done perfectly for their vacation.” The heartbreaking end of the song’s only (repeated) verse highlights the personal, emotional contour of the wounds caused by these systems of oppression that treat human beings as disposable: “Un día es tu amigo, otro día, no.”
- Xicano Vega ft. Dr. Mario Garza, S.K. Winter-Yat: 'Sacred Land' (2025)
Hailing from the longstanding Texas hip-hop stronghold of Houston, rapper Xicano Vega’s songs often delve into Mexican American history and activism, as well as important decolonial concepts like land back and reparations. On “Sacred Land,” interspersed with spoken word bits from a lecture by Dr. Mario Garza, Vega switches between English and Spanish while naming his indigenous affiliations and then situating his efforts within older customs. “Let’s start reflecting / revive, indigenize, and start respecting / pass down our history through oral tradition,” he raps before tracing colonization through the mission system and into modern day oppression. In his guest verse, which ends the album, rapper S.K. Winter-Yat eviscerates the colonizer mindset before reminding “never forget b— that this land is sacred.”
- King Kyle Lee: 'FDT The Sunken Place' (2026)
Rapper King Kyle Lee is best known for repping his hometown team, the San Antonio Spurs, in song, for his anti-bullying efforts, and for generally being one of the more consistent local rappers year after year. This year, he kicked things off with a bang, taking very direct aim at Donald Trump in a song that provocatively references the film Get Out’s notion of “the sunken place.” The SA rapper sets out to specifically shatter any assumptions that rappers or those in the hip-hop community are or should be Trump supporters, calling out recent high-profile rappers who have ill-advisedly held court with DJT. In his laundry list of perfectly sound reasons to hate the man whose initials front end the title, King Kyle Lee includes references to the recent Epstein files as well as ICE activity and general personal disgustingness.
