At his most vitriolic, Billy Bragg is still a softy. The now legendary British singer-songwriter has made a name for himself since the 80's through crooning romantic ballads and biting political critique. Both originate from the same place; for Bragg, as for his hero Woody Guthrie, love for humanki…
As if the music was reflecting off the bicycles, Gliss' afternoon set at during our SXSW broadcast was a shimmering cooldown after Jovanotti threw a vibrant Italian party in Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop. As the group ran through a set of tunes from their latest LP, this year's Langsome Dans, frontwoma…
Unknown Mortal Orchestra is a bit of a conundrum, at least when it comes to classifying them. Not really a "band," UMO is really the project of Ruban Nielson, who wrote and recorded songs in his bedroom and even posted the insanely catchy "Ffunny Ffrends" first online anonymously. Not really a loca…
It's been hard for us to forget the beautiful and intimate session we had with Ólafur Arnalds during our Iceland Airwaves broadcast last year at KEX Hostel. This year, when we saw that the young Icelandic composer and songwriter would be performing at SXSW, we wanted to get him live on air again, n…
We like to believe Sam Beam is one of our own. Though he hails about as far away as you can get, from South Carolina and later Florida, the first three Iron & Wine albums were released on Seattle's celebrated label Sub Pop. And of course, KEXP was one of the first radio stations to get behind …
There are few moments in rock 'n' roll as iconic as the opening drum-and-breath line in "Time of the Season." Yet unlike many of their British Invasion co-horts (like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who and The Moody Blues), The Zombies never reached the same level of success. Maybe it was tha…
At 60 years old, Robyn Hitchcock has experienced a longevity that would be the cause for many musicians' envy. He began his career as a member of several small, local London bands until 1976 when he founded the psychedelic folk rock group The Soft Boys. In 1981 (about a year after The Soft Boys bro…
If you've been listening to the Morning Show with John Richards, you've probably heard a lot of up-and-comers Wild Cub, whose energetic, electronic-infused sound takes the best from 80's new wave romanticism, R&B and indie rock and makes it impossible to sit still. Back in February, the Nashvil…
That True Believers' posthumously released second is called Hard Road is no joke. The Alejandro and Javier Escovedo-led Austin band hit the major pitfalls of the 80's music industry starting with a big local buzz that led to a rushed and underproduced first album, a lineup change dictated by their …
In 2018, KEXP celebrated the 30th anniversary of local record label Sub Pop with a four-month retrospective, "counting up" every catalog number in their vast discography of over 1,200 releases. Dig into the archives of our catalog coverage, featuring in-depth coverage on the history of their releases.
