Five years is way too long for a visit from Midlake, but let's just say the hauntingly-beautiful folk-rock group from Denton, Texas had a good reason. After spending two years recording in the farm, frontman and founding member Tim Smith announced he was leaving the band. Rather than break-up, the …
As Americans we are no longer surprised by European artists who bring their amazing music to our humble shores. The Joy Formidable is another among the ever-growing list of impressive British talent that has taken the US by storm. In 2007, childhood best friends Rhiannon "Ritzy" Bryan and Rhydian D…
In our series about “breaking” artists on KEXP, Emily Fox talks to The Roadhouse host DJ Greg Vandy and John Gilbreath, host of Jazz Theatre.
We can't say the song title on the air, but we sure can on the KEXP Blog! So, check out the clip for the track "Shithole" from Toronto stand-outs Weaves. Director Trevor Blumas fixes his lens on frontwoman Jasmyn Burke. In a press release, Burke says, "We shot this video on a hot Summers day with …
I covered a Robyn Hitchcock in this space a while back, but this is the first time we've looked at an album from The Soft Boys, the band that first brought him to the attention of college radio nerds across the globe. The band was rather short-lived, breaking up shortly after the relatively unsucce…
Influential British trio and longtime KEXP favorites Saint Etienne released a wonderful cover of Neil Young's song "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" as their breakout debut single nearly 30 years ago, and they're still going strong today. With each new release, they continue to find ways to tweak an…
Anacortes, WA native, Phil Elverum talks about how he tried to break nostalgia by creating a one-track, 45-minute album under his old stage name, The Microphones.
KEXP’s Cheryl Waters talks with Sharon Van Etten about epic Ten and has her break down some of the covers on the record.
Earlier this week New York duo Cults (Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion) teased a possible new album by sharing a 20-second clip of a song called "Gilded Lilly" on Instagram. Today they announced the new album, called Offering, and shared its title track, their first release in four years after 20…
Since R.E.M.'s 2011 break-up, we haven't seen much of frontman Michael Stipe. But, last night on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, he returned to the spotlight for a haunting performance of David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World." He'll likely reprise his cover, or perhaps do a different …
Minneapolis' ubiquitous underground hip hop figure P.O.S has a long list of credentials: guitarist for Building Better Bombs, vocalist and keyboard player for Marijuana Deathsquads, member of well-populated supergroup Gayngs, and a founding member of the Doomtree collective. All of these were runni…
Last night at Chop Suey, the full lineup for the third annual Macefield Music Festival was announced. The 2015 lineup is the best yet, featuring a deep roster of NW artists including Mark Lanegan, Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter, Grace Love & the True Loves, Thunderpussy, Fox & the La…
Festival season might have just kicked off in the Californian desert, but there's another major musical gathering going on this weekend – the fourteenth annual EMP Pop Conference. This year's conference is titled Get Ur Freak On: Music, Weirdness, and Transgression, and across the numerous roundtab…
Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. This week, we are featuring Christmas…
When you have nearly half a century of film scores to choose from and you don the Neumos stage on a Tuesday night, which one do you play first? These are the types of questions you would ask yourself if you were master Italian composer Fabio Frizzi. Frizzi is the second four-decades-deep horror sou…
Minneapolis must have been a magical place in the '80s with bands like Hüsker Dü breaking through the mainstream, and venues like First Avenue and the 7th Street Entry helping hone these rising new stars. A little bit of that magic was in the KEXP studios this day as Hüsker Dü's former frontman, Bo…
More sad news from the world of music: producer and manager George Martin passed away peacefully in his London home last night at the age of 90. Martin is often referred to as "The Fifth Beatle," as he was the one who discovered The Beatles, signing the young band to Parlophone Records in 1962, an…
Essaie Pas is Marie Davidson and Pierre Guerineau, a married singer and engineer from Montreal, who have worked as individual artists as well as making three prior Essaie Pas records before this one. Demain marks a special milestone for them as their first for DFA, a label which continues to give h…
When asked how they deal with the stress of extensive touring, Yelle quips, "We are planking. Every day." Maybe we should be taking notes. Hailing from Brittany, France, electropop duo Yelle (Julie Budet) and Grandmarnier (Jean-François Perrier) have captured a wide following in recent years with f…
In 1998, Old Crow Medicine Show were busking in front of Pike Place Market. In 2014, they're headlining the 2,800-capacity Paramount Theatre. Along the way, the Nashville, Tennessee-based group became one of the primary figures in the 2000s roots music revival, bringing the same energy from their b…
