AUSTIN, Texas -- Artists and venues slowly appeared to be returning to normal Thursday hours after a car plowed into a crowd of revelers, leaving two dead and 23 injured.

Venues near the tragedy canceled afternoon events and stated that concerts for this evening were "still pending," although early indications were that those shows would go on.

Meanwhile, images of pop star Lady Gaga rehearsing at a venue just blocks from where the accident occurred have flooded social media. Lady Gaga, who is scheduled to perform tonight at Stubb's, is the biggest artist to descend upon Austin this week for South by Southwest, a one-time industry event that has expanded to a week-long party with free events -- and often free booze -- available day and night. 

"All my love to music lovers and fans, stay safe tonight we love you," Lady Gaga tweeted early Thursday. 

PHOTOS: Car plows into crowd at SXSW

At a morning news conference, South by Southwest's managing director, Roland Swenson, cautioned that it...

Wednesday’s incident at the South by Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas,  in which two people were killed and nearly two dozen others injured by a suspected drunk driver who police say drove into a crowd outside a club while trying to evade officers, was just the latest tragedy to hit during a heavily populated music event. Here are a dozen others, from Pukkelpop to Altamont.

2012: Radiohead, Toronto: A drum technician was killed when a stage roof collapsed in fair weather before the English band was scheduled to perform.

2011: Pukkelpop Festival, Belgium: Severe storms cause multiple stages to collapse, killing five people. The remainder of the 2011 festival was canceled, but Pukkelpop resumed in 2012.

2011: Sugarland, Iowa State Fair: Seven fans died and  58 other people were injured when storm winds caused stage and rigging to collapse before a scheduled concert by the country-pop duo.

PHOTOS: Scenes from SXSW 2014

2010: Electric Daisy Festival, Los Angeles: A 15-...

AUSTIN, Texas -- A car plowed into the crowd at the South by Southwest music festival early Thursday, leaving two dead and 23 injured, police said. One of the dead was a local Austin female, who was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

Also dead is Steven Craenmehr, 35, of the Amsterdam-based music booking and promotion agency MassiveMusic. The company released a statement on its website this morning that read: "It is with great sadness that we announce the sudden passing of our close friend and colleague Steven Craenmehr, 35, on March 13th, 2014 at SXSW. During the 8 years that Steven worked for MassiveMusic, we got to know him as an unstoppable force, full of life, love and laughter.

"This is an irreplaceable loss for the MassiveMusic family and we are grateful for the years we spent with him. Our thoughts are with Steven's family and friends."

Two more victims were characterized as being in "very critical condition" and three more were said to be "possibly" in need of surgery....

AUSTIN, Texas — Video images of fierce predatory animals flashed across several gigantic screens behind Jay Z and Kanye West at the Austin Music Hall on Wednesday night, a visual holdover from the rappers' collaborative tour in 2011 but also, it seemed, a kind of warning to the South by Southwest music festival they'd dropped in to dominate.

Attract as many superstars as you like, the footage appeared to say — we'll devour them all.

Once a forum for undiscovered regional talent, SXSW has become irresistible in recent years to A-list acts eager for a concentrated audience of gatekeepers and tastemakers. Ditto the blue-chip brands that can afford to hire stars to be the glittering centerpieces of elaborate marketing stunts such as Thursday's scheduled Lady Gaga concert, for which Doritos asked prospective showgoers to complete tasks requiring various levels of humiliation.

PHOTOS: Scenes from SXSW 2014

Nothing so gauche accompanied Jay Z and West's show, a comparatively...

AUSTIN, Texas -- A great many of the panel discussions at this year's South by Southwest conference offer variations on a question that goes right to the heart of our digital age: How are musicians supposed to get paid when music is so readily had for free?

On Wednesday afternoon, experts including Mike Herring, CFO of the Internet streaming service Pandora, examined the matter in a conversation titled "Will Artists Make Money on Big Music Platforms?"

The verdict? It's unclear.

PHOTOS: Scenes from SXSW 2014

Last month 76 million people used Pandora to listen to music, Herring said, but only 3 million ponied up at least $4 to do it. (The names of some other panels, including "Get Yourself Working With Music Houses on Ads Now," offered little more hope to struggling musicians.)

Yet if the meeting rooms at SXSW seemed filled with worry about money, Kelela revealed none in her performance earlier Wednesday at a party sponsored by Spin magazine.

"I released a mixtape called 'Cut 4 Me' last...

AUSTIN, Texas --  "There's been this cultural shift, an explosion of hipster culture," said Blondie's Chris Stein at his band's Wednesday afternoon panel at the South by Southwest music festival here. "When we got here it was like 'World War Z,' every single guy was in a plaid shirt and fedora. When we started our band, we were on the fringe. Now the whole culture is inside."

That line got big laughs from the packed room inside the Austin Convention Center. But it raised a good point about contemporary pop culture -- what happens when everyone becomes a gatekeeper of originality (or rather, when no one is)? Is that better or worse for a healthy aesthetic and business climate for the arts?

In the '70s and '80s, Blondie was at the vanguard of mixing punk, disco, hip-hop and pop in ways that feel entirely unremarkable today but were incredibly iconoclastic at the time. So perhaps its better qualified than most legacy acts to comment on how the total system collapse of the established...

"Let It Go," the soaring showstopper from “Frozen,” has an unlikely remix coming out soon.

The Academy Award-winning smash sung by Idina Menzel got a reworking by Dutch electronic dance music DJ Armin van Buuren.

His remix is just one of more than a dozen that Walt Disney Records commissioned for “Dconstructed,” a compilation album that placed Disney tunes, including several beloved classics, into the hands of EDM stars.

Songs have been pulled from older Disney films, such as “Dumbo,” “The Lion King” and “Toy Story,” and more recent hits, such as “Monsters University” and “The Incredibles.”  

The 14-track set will include contributions from Buuren, Avicii, Kaskade, Mat Zo and Unkle.

PHOTOS: Unexpected musical collaborations

Disney has so far issued only the track list and a quick Instagram teaser for the album, but it's clear the house that Mickey Mouse built is ready to rave.  

“Circle of Life,&...

Rapper Rick Ross may have the top-selling album in the U.S., but the past week was a good one to be associated with an animated film.

In the days following the March 2 telecast of the Academy Awards, songs from Disney's "Frozen" and Universal Pictures' "Despicable Me 2" proved that family-friendly fare still had a place among all the tongue-waving and drink-induced salaciousness on the pop charts.

Hollywood's biggest night didn't propel Pharrell Williams to the top of the U.S. albums chart with his latest record, "Girl,"  but the Academy Awards certainly did wonders for his Oscar-nominated single "Happy." The slinky little soul number from animated film "Despicable Me 2" is once again the bestselling download in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan. 

With an additional 490,000 downloads purchased, "Happy" has now tallied more than 2.6 million in single sales. For "Happy," the week following the Oscar telecast has been its best ever in sales, and it's the strongest performance by a...

Beck has added 10 dates to his 2014 tour, including an April 9 stop at the Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara ahead of his scheduled performances April 13 and 20 at Coachella. He’ll also be dropping in tonight on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and April 1 on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.”

Beck’s new album, “Morning Phase,” remains in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart in its second week of release, having sold an additional 33,000 copies last week, bringing its two-week sales total to 120,000.

Of “Morning Phase,” Times staff writer Mikael Wood wrote, “the new record serves as a kind of spiritual sequel -- a ‘companion piece,’ his camp calls it -- to 2002's ‘Sea Change,’ on which the singer broke from his established collage aesthetic to offer up a dozen slow-and-low folk songs about the pain of heartache. True to his transformer's nature, the sequel is better than the original.&...

For those who want to smell like Pharrell Williams, your chance is coming this fall.

The superstar producer-performer continues his recent pop culture breakout with the next logical move -- a fragrance.

Williams has teamed with Japanese fashion company Comme des Garçons to release an exclusive fragrance in September. Girl (named after his latest album), will be for both men and women.

PHOTOS: Unexpected musical collaborations

"This is the first time we have created a fragrance for a musician, and I can think of no greater talent and no greater gentleman to have done this with,” Adrian Joffe, chief executive of Comme des Garçons Parfum SA, said in a statement.  “Pharrell knew exactly what he wanted the perfume to smell like right from the beginning. It has been an honor to work with such a creative artist with a great vision, which for Comme des Garçons is the most important thing."

The fashion company didn’t issue any further details on the fragrance, but we’re...

AUSTIN, Texas — The state is known for its stalwart independent streak, but on the first night of music at South by Southwest, Austin was a place for the world to mingle.

From L.A. buzz bands to K-pop superstars and pop-rap titans, Tuesday's late-night lineup proved that, for all the worries that SXSW has become a targeted-marketing snake eating its own hashtagged-and-branded tail, there really isn't a better mile of live music in America than what's happening this week.

Our estimable hometown was well represented Tuesday night. Current Echo residents James Supercave started its set at Empire Control Room with a half-full venue and a meticulous but very slow-burning set of '70s art-pop-laced indie. But by the time the band got around to a more punk-funky and populist portion of the set, Joaquin Pastor's vocals got looser and more invigorating,and the crowds on the street streamed in accordingly. The band doesn't have an obvious standout song yet, but it had charisma and precision...