Closing up Decibel Festival is no small task, but if anyone is up to the task and still ready to party after four previous nights of madness, it's LA hip hop collective Friends of Friends. The group houses a brilliant group of young musicians, specializing in electronic, trap, hip-hop, and experime…
These days, it's a lot easier to sell headlines than it is to sell records. If you write a great pop song, your best bets to sell are either to stack it so chock full of name-drops that you hardly see your own, or to dial the clickbait schtick meter up as high as it will go. But when presented with…
The second day of Macefield Music Festival invoked thunderstorms and musical fanfare as dozens of bands faced ecstatic crowds of music lovers at the KEXP Mainstage, Tractor Tavern, Conor Byrne Pub, and The Sunset. Seattle rapper Grynch threw down his approachable, lyrical west coast rhymes for an e…
Los Angeles artist Ramona Gonzalez launched her Nite Jewel project back in 2008, unveiling a magnetic fusion of dreamy synth-pop, ethereal R&B, woozy funk, and hazy disco on early hotly-tipped releases for Italians Do It Better as well we her own label, Gloriette Records. A prolific artist and…
Only a year or two after establishing itself as the first NYC music festival to actually pull off an event with the caliber and scope fitting of the city, The Governors Ball Music Festival is at a crossroads. Stereogum's Michael Nelson does an excellent job explaining it in depth, but due to the em…
Today's Song of the Day, as chosen by Kevin Cole, host of Drive Time on KEXP, is "Frontier's Edge" by The Budos Band, a 2023 single on Diamond West Records.
