After over a decade, Fruit Bats is, um, flying away into the sunset, as mastermind Eric D. Johnston announced this morning: "Hey All. So, after 13 years, 5 albums, bunch of tours, and lots of laughs, Fruit Bats is calling it a day. There is no major or dramatic reason – I’m not gonna launch into o…
KEXP just wrapped up our annual Iceland Airwaves Music Festival broadcast this past weekend, including an off-air session with Múm. And today, the band have premiered a remix from none other than fellow Icelander, Jónsi of Sigur Rós! Check it out below, and check out all our Iceland Airwaves cover…
Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of 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's featured songs come fr…
Seattle's Beat Connection seem to evolve with grace. As is the case with most young bands, they've had plenty of that evolution in the last three years. Their journey from the early house-driven days of 2010's Surf Noir to the vast, green sound of their 2012 debut LP Palace Garden and even through …
It hasn't been that long since Seattle band The Cave Singers performed songs from their excellent 2013 album, Naomi, live in the KEXP studio, so when we asked them to perform a special session as part of KEXP's VIP Club Concert series just three months later, they went back to their own studio and …
Sunscreen for the Eastern Washington sun? Check. Sleeping bag for the few moments you'll be able to sleep? Check? Earplugs for when your 'drums need a break? Check. Booty shorts for dancin'? Check. High energy bars for, uh... energy? Check. Roadtrip music for the journey out to The Gorge? Double an…
On September 10, The Clash will release a huge box set called Sound System. According to guitarist Mick Jones this will be "the greatest box set ever." The set will include all five LPs, three disks of singles, a DVD of the band's music videos, and SO MUCH more. As if this wasn't cool enough, the…
London-based group The Veils stopped by KEXP for a live session rich in gorgeous textures and thoughtful, lyrical compositions. Immediately, even before bandleader Finn Andrews' vocals begin, the joyous production strikes listeners via jaunty piano runs, bright brass melodies, and lively guitar rhy…
Few artists resonate so strongly with KEXP listeners and all Seattle music fans as Kurt Cobain. His band, Nirvana, wasn't the first to break out of the Northwest nor did their groundbreaking breakthrough, Nevermind, sell the most among their contemporaries, but Cobain probably represented more of t…
If you're like me, odds are you hear the name Lene Lovich (or, as I recently did, find a copy of this very album in the bins at Goodwill) and instantly hear her distinctively playful yet unabashedly Teutonic voice squeaking out the hook to her best-known song, "Lucky Number." Like so many brilliant…
Last week, Toro y Moi showed the Crocodile an excellent time with their Seattle tour stop in support of the fantastic new record Anything In Return. Accompanied by eclectic New York dance act Sinkane and rising Georgia shoegaze band Dog Bite, the show was an all-round excellent bill full of good vi…
Radiohead recently released a 20th-anniversary reissue of OK Computer called OKNOTOK. A lot of excitement surrounded the inclusion of three previously unreleased tracks, one of those being a fan-favorite that the band had played a number of times live but had never released a studio version of, cal…
Ah, it's time for another dip into the "Bands Levi Really Should Have Been Paying Attention to at the Time" file. I can't tell you how many Red Lorry Yellow Lorry records I flipped past in my teenaged record-store-digging days, and I'm sure I heard them on one of our fine local college radio statio…
Music That Matters, Vol. 398 - Don't Break Your Promise At KEXP, we never break our promise to bring you the best music possible and, hopefully, to turn you on to some new music that you love. Our latest Music That Matters podcast from Midday Show host Cheryl Waters offers up a sampling of wonderf…
Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unrealeased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJ’s think you should hear. Today’s song, featured on the Mo…
Those Radiohead fans are sharp: YES, to confirm the posters and the cryptic Twitter video, the band are indeed re-issuing their acclaimed 1997 album OK Computer in honor of its 20th anniversary. Cleverly titled OKNOTOK, it will include a remastered version of the original album, eight B-sides, and…
There's been a lot of speculation about Amber Coffman's departure from Dirty Projectors. The lead single from her solo debut City Of No Reply is defiantly titled "All To Myself," yet the album was produced by her former bandmate David Longstreth. On the latest and seventh Dirty Projectors album, L…
Barboza, the intimate venue underneath Neumos, feels cut off from the rest of the world, with no sight or sound of the rest of the world. In some ways, it's the perfect venue for a band like Hælos, whose particular brand of UK club R&B feels wholly detached from the rest of the world, cinematic…
When recording, San Fermin is the creative project of Ellis Ludwig-Leone, a Brooklyn-based composer who began shifting away from classical arrangements to pop ones towards the end of his college years. On tour, San Fermin is an eight-musician tour de force that brings those compositions to life. Wr…
How is walking through the woods on a foggy, chilly late spring day similar to strolling past the closed fun houses and ferris wheels on a boardwalk at the end of summer? You could just as easily listen to the melancholic surf bee-bop of Seattle's La Luz in both of the situations. What started at a…
