Courtesy of the artists Clockwise from top left: Austra, Cheyenne Marie Mize, Mount Kimbie and Holger.

South by Southwest is nothing if not overwhelming. With roughly 2,000 bands to choose from in four days, even the toughest, savviest, most dedicated music fan can wind up feeling crushed — just ask NPR Music’s Stephen Thompson, who came home nursing a sinus infection of biblical proportions. But there’s one clear advantage to the avalanche of options: You’re bound to stumble on something you’ve never heard before, and it might just blow your mind.

Check out the gang’s late-night dispatches for even more new finds from this year’s SXSW.

That’s what happened to the All Songs Considered crew, and this week we’ve got SXSW goodies galore: ∙ At the end of each night, Bob Boilen, Robin Hilton, Stephen and Ann Powers assembled to recap all the new music they saw that day. Hear their late-night dispatches in the sidebar at left. ∙ Bob went to (count ‘em) 67 shows this year, and you can see his one-minute videos from each one on the All Songs blog. Tuesday and Wednesday‘s posts are up — check back for more throughout the week. ∙ The Tiny Desk tradition lived on in Austin, as bands crowded into the NPR team’s hotel room for special acoustic performances. Check out the Tiny SXSW Concert videos. And listen to this week’s show to hear Bob and Stephen’s reflections on this year’s pleasant surprises, which include riotous Brazilian rock, lilting Kentucky folk and lush Canadian synth-pop. As always, you can head to our SXSW hub for NPR Music’s complete coverage.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — After the fights were over, the fighters from Strikeforce: Feijao vs. Henderson had plenty to say. — "Beating the opponent was the most important thing, and the belt was the cherry on top. But I do like cherries," Dan Henderson said after winning the championship with a knockout of Rafael "Feijao" Cavalcante. Though the Strikeforce light heavyweight belt has not yet been successfully defended, Henderson insists he’s not supersitious. He also said that Cavalcante’s strength advantage was not a problem. "All throughout my career in wrestling and MMA, I’ve learned that it’s about technique and position. I’ve never felt weak against big and strong guys because of that. I’m big on the inside," Henderson said.  "Henderson is a tough guy. He does what he does well," Cavalcante said. — Liz Carmouche impressed the MMA world even in loss, as she took her fight with champion Marloes Coenen on two-weeks notice and still took two rounds from her. Carmouche says that she can’t wait to  return to the gym. She also said that she did not tap from the second-round guillotine."It was tight, but I wasn’t tapping for sure," Carmouche said.After the fight, Coenen said that she believes that Carmouche will be the champion. Carmouche was touched by the idea. "I felt like I won for a second. I can’t express what that did for me." — Marloes Coenen said that she was appreciative of having a referee who
let the fight continue, because she felt her bout against Cristiane
"Cyborg" Santos was stopped too quickly. When asked if Carmouche’s
strength was a factor, Coenen answered, "Did you look at her?"  She also had a short answer on if she’d like another shot at Cyborg. "Definitely." — Tim Kennedy called out Robbie Lawler for his next possible opponent, but said that he would like another shot at the Strikeforce middleweight belt, currently held by Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza.  "Of course I want the title, but I want to fight the best. Strikeforce has the best heavyweights in the world, but we’re contenders in the middleweights, with the athlete we have."  — Strikeforce announced that Beijing gold medalist in judo Satoshi Ishii has signed with Strikeforce and will fight Apr. 1 on a Strikeforce: Challengers Card. 

NBC has renewed three of its Thursday night comedies for next season.

The Office, Parks and Recreation and Community will be returning for the 2011-12 television season.

“I am so pleased to renew these three outstanding comedies which are all at the top of their game creatively,” said Bob Greenblatt, chairman of NBC Entertainment.

WATCH: Video interviews with the cast and creator of Community

Veteran comedy The Office is delivering a 4.0 rating in the adults 18-49 demographic and averaging 7.7 million viewers for its current seventh season. Steve Carell’s farewell episode is scheduled to air at the end of April, with Will Ferrell coming on for a multi-episode guest arc.

In the ratings, Amy Poehler’s Parks and Rec, currently in its third season, is averaging a 2.8 in the key demo and 5.5 million viewers. With its move to the 9:30 p.m. time slot, the series is up 17 percent in the 18-49 demo (2.8 vs. 2.4) and up 9 percent in total viewers (5.5 million vs. 5.1 million).

WATCH: Video interviews with the cast of Parks and Recreation

Critical favorite Community, which has anchored the competitive 8 p.m. time slot on Thursdays for NBC and is led by The Soup host Joel McHale, has averaged a 2.1 in the 18-49 demo and 4.7 million viewers so far in its sophomore season. Lost star Josh Holloway is set to star in the two-part season finale, a followup of sorts to last season’s “Modern Warfare” episode.

With NBC’s core comedy lineup back for another round — it was previously announced 30 Rock will also return next season, making it the show’s sixth — that leaves struggling freshmen comedies Outsourced and Perfect Couples still awaiting pickups.

Both Parks and Rec and Community were recently honored at the annual PaleyFest.

Internet Explorer 9 Beta on the Windows 7 desktop

Microsoft has announced it will release Internet Explorer 9 onto the web March 14. Internet Explorer 9 will be a massive overhaul for IE and brings much needed standards support, speed boosts and hardware acceleration.
The first Platform Preview of IE9 arrived nearly a year ago and since then Microsoft has released several more previews and betas. Along the way, IE9 has gained support for more HTML5 features, CSS3 improvements and better hardware acceleration.
IE9 will be good news for web developers since it adds considerable support for HTML5 and CSS3. Its predecessor, IE8 doesn’t support any of HTML5 and is widely blamed for holding back efforts to create a better web.
Microsoft is hoping to change that with IE9 which not only supports much of HTML5 and CSS3, but includes hardware acceleration for faster performance and privacy protection settings to stop websites from tracking your movements around the web. IE9 is also no slouch when it comes to JavaScript performance thanks to the new Chakra JS engine.
We took a look at the HTML5 and CSS3 features in IE9 last year, but Microsoft has added quite a few more since then, including support for CSS3’s 2-D transforms and new selectors, HTML5’s semantic elements, the WOFF font format and the geolocation API.
In terms of web standards IE9 is light years beyond anything Microsoft has previously released. Granted, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome are somewhat further along with the more experimental features of HTML5, but given IE’s dominant market share worldwide, IE9 should be a huge boon for HTML5 adoption (provided users upgrade).
We’ll be sure to give you a full rundown on everything that’s new in IE9 when it arrives next week.
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Enlarge Seth Perlman/AP Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn speaks with reporters after signing legislation abolishing the death penalty in the state at the capitol in Springfield on Wednesday.

Seth Perlman/AP Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn speaks with reporters after signing legislation abolishing the death penalty in the state at the capitol in Springfield on Wednesday.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn abolished the death penalty Wednesday, more than a decade after the state imposed a moratorium on executions out of concern that innocent people could be put to death by a justice system that had wrongly condemned 13 men. Quinn also commuted the sentences of all 15 inmates remaining on Illinois’ death row. They will now serve life in prison. As he signed the bill, Quinn called it the “most difficult decision” he has made as governor. But he said the best step forward for Illinois was to be done with the death penalty altogether. “We all know that our state has had serious problems with respect to the system of the death penalty for many years,” he said. State lawmakers voted in January to abandon capital punishment, and Quinn spent two months reflecting on the issue, speaking with prosecutors, victims’ families, death penalty opponents and religious leaders. Quinn said he studied every aspect of Illinois’ death penalty and concluded that it was impossible to create a perfect system, “one that is free of all mistakes, free of all discrimination with respect to race or economic circumstance or geography.” Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said no state has studied the death penalty more than Illinois. “For a Midwest state that actually had one of the larger death rows in the country to come to this point, I think, is even more significant than some of the earlier states which hardly used the death penalty,” he said. Illinois’ moratorium goes back to 2000, when then-Republican Gov. George Ryan made international headlines by suspending executions. He acted after years of growing doubts about the justices system and after courts threw out the death sentences of 13 condemned men. Shortly before leaving office in 2003, Ryan also cleared death row, commuting the sentences of 167 inmates to life in prison. Illinois’ last execution was in 1999. When the new law takes effect on July 1, Illinois will join 15 other states that have done away with the executions. Quinn said he hoped other states would follow. “I think if you abolish the death penalty in Illinois, we should abolish it for everyone,” he said. New Mexico had been the most recent state to repeal the death penalty, doing so in 2009, although new Republican Gov. Susana Martinez wants to reinstate it. Quinn consulted with retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and met with Sister Helen Prejean, the inspiration for the movie Dead Man Walking. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan appealed directly to Quinn to veto the bill, as did several county prosecutors and victims’ families. They said safeguards, including videotaped interrogations and easier access to DNA evidence, were in place to prevent innocent people from being wrongly executed. Pam Bosley, who helped organize a group for families of children killed by gun violence, tried to talk Quinn out of signing the bill. Her 18-year-old son, Terrell, was shot to death in 2006 as he was coming out of church. “I can’t see my son at all no more. I can’t see him grow old,” she said. “They took all that from me, so I feel that their life needs to be ended.” But death penalty opponents argued that there was still no guarantee that an innocent person couldn’t be put to death. Quinn’s own lieutenant governor, Sheila Simon, a former southern Illinois prosecutor, asked him to abolish capital punishment. Quinn offered words of consolation to those who had lost loved ones and announced that there would be a death penalty abolition trust fund to provide resources to relatives of victims. “You are not alone in your grief,” he said. “I think it’s important that all of us reach out through this trust fund in helping family members recover.” Twelve men have been executed in Illinois since 1977, when the death penalty was reinstated. The last was Andrew Kokoraleis on March 17, 1999. At the time, the average length of stay on death row for the dozen men was 13 years. Kokoraleis, convicted of mutilating and murdering a 21-year-old woman, was put to death by lethal injection. NPR’s Cheryl Corley contributed to this report, which contains material from The Associated Press