“Boy, the come down here was easy, like the arrival of a new day.” That’s how Adam Granduciel chooses to open the new album from The War on Drugs after a minute and a half of dreamscape Americana. As the listener, you could say the same thing. The Philadelphia band have always found a way to worm i…
"I can't get enough... SPACE!" That's what Foals frontman Yannis Phillipakis yells right before the band launches into a ferocious, locked-in paroxysm during the chorus of "Inhaler", the first single from the Oxford five-piece's third album, Holy Fire. Long hailed by the British press as one of gui…
Aminéisn't just up-and-coming anymore -- he's arrived. The Portland rapper made his Seattle debut in probably the biggest way possible -- playing to a packed out crowd at Key Arena at the Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival. Walking on to the beastly, hyphy-like beat of "Red Mercedes," Aminé kept…
Bon Dimanche! It’s written in graffiti on several buildings all over Rennes. Happy Sunday! Sunday is the day of rest for the French people and even our crew got to take a small break on the final day of filming during the Trans Musicales festival. Normally, we’re up by 6am, breakfast at 7, out the …
case/lang/veirs -- the super-group of Neko Case, k.d. lang, and Laura Veirs -- share a track from their forthcoming self-titled debut. Stream the single "Best Kept Secret" below, which premiered on Lena Dunham's website Lenny Letter. case told Dunham, "It was done in one or two takes, and it went …
KEXP celebrates Mixtape Week, August 26-30.
For Friday night's Neumos crowd, reality became something entirely separate from what we knew it to be. The night's headliner, Canadian electronic wunderkind Dan Deacon, bends the strings that we dangle by enough on his own, but combined with the dystopian shimmer of New York synth rock act Prince …
Holy shit, Say Hi knows how to get the party started on a Friday night at 9PM! I honestly think I saw more empty drink cups and shot glasses lining the Barboza shelf of subwoofers tonight than I’ve ever seen at their weekly Saturday night dance gigs. In a city on a hill where we show the Rocky Horr…
I think I've found, in Ed Ka-Spel (and his band Legendary Pink Dots), an artist who could go up against Peter Hammill in terms of voluminous artistic output and lasting influence. Yet again I find myself faced with an insanely daunting discography and biography, and a raft of adoring comments (and,…
A good way to see how far a band has come is to look at where they began. Case in point, one of 2013's more enjoyable internet moments was when someone unearthed an old image of Radiohead during their college days. Thom Yorke and co. look goofy, amiable, and exactly the sort of people that would ha…
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 his interview with Stereogum, Kip Berman historically described The Pains of Being Pure At Heart as a project about writing songs and playing them with friends. Now, almost five years since the band’s divine eponymous debut, with a new backing lineup that helped record the new LP out in a week a…
Okkervil River's 2005 masterpiece, Black Sheep Boy, is one of those records that grabs you wherever you're at. If you haven't gotten the divine pleasure of experiencing it yet, I promise you, it will grab you at some point soon. There's just something about the coming-of-age brilliance of its narra…
