Rounding out an unbelievable first day of KEXP’s Iceland Airwaves broadcast live at Kex Hostel are garage rock legends The Sonics. Formed in Tacoma in 1960, The Sonics are widely regarded as the first garage and first punk band, and have had a wide-reaching influence on the course of garage, punk, …
Next on the KEXP broadcast live from Kex Hostel at Iceland Airwaves Music Festival was wild Japanese psychadelic punk band Bo Ningen. A four-piece acid-punk band all hailing from Japan, but got together as a band in London in 2006-7. Taigen Kwabe (vocal & bass) met Kohhei Matsuda (guitar) in 2…
Vancouver, BC artist Dan Bejar -- better known as Destroyer -- returns with his 11th album, which KEXP Music Director Don Yates describes as "a powerful set of dark,'80s-steeped New Wave/post-punk with prominent percussive synths, gleaming guitars and occasional strings and horns accompanying his d…
Each week in 2022, KEXP pays homage to a different year and our writers commemorate it with one song from that year that resonates with them. This week, Martin Douglas looks back at No Age's 2007 quasi-anthem "Everybody's Down" and the emergence of a localized DIY experimental punk scene right at t…
KEXP is celebrating our 50th anniversary this year, and we're looking back at the last half-century of music. Each week in 2022, KEXP pays homage to a different year, and our writers are commemorating a song from that year that resonates with them. This week, KEXP's Martin Douglas looks back at vis…
As KEXP celebrates its 50th anniversary, we're looking back at the last half-century of music. Each week in 2022, KEXP pays homage to a different year and our writers are commemorating with one song from that year that resonates with them. This week, Martin writes about the band's 1978 single, the …
One of the bands with the best names around – King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – have released their fifth album this week. KEXP Music Director Don Yates calls the latest from this Australian group "an often-fiery blend of propulsive garage-punk and trippy psych-rock, combining fuzzy guitars, o…
Seattleites! Are you into affordable music festivals, diverse musicians, and general weirdos? Are you into DIY punk, wild performance, and ground-breaking, earth-shattering, social movements? Well, this April 10th through the 18th, Seattle is hosting the 'Mo-Wave! Festival, a celebration of the que…
2014 kicks off April with another great batch of new releases, including the fourth album from Cleveland trio, Cloud Nothings. KEXP's Music Director Don Yates describes the release as "a ferocious, consistently engaging set of anthemic punk-pop with raw, distorted guitars, relentless driving rhythm…
Seattle based feminist punk-supergroup Childbirth features members of Pony Time, Chastity Belt and Tacocat. Listen to them perform an album perfect live set on KEXP's Audioasis. Recorded 02/14/2015 - 8 songs: Childbirth, I'm More Fertile Than You, How Do Girls Even Do It?, I Only "Hugged…
Sonic Reducer brings you three hours of the best in local, national, international punk and hardcore. Your hosts, Brian, Jenn and Dr. West drag you through a mess of short, fast and loud songs from today and back in the day every Saturday night from 9 PM to midnight.
A year after his debut album release, it is no doubt that Benjamin Booker is a rockstar. He's played the festival main stages, toured across the country, and even guitar dueled with Jack White. It's deserved notoriety for a man who makes such a unique blend of punk, rock, blues and folk. And even w…
Half an hour into one of Refused's first performances of 2015, singer Dennis Lyxzen laid out their current manifesto. "You know how when you're teenagers playing music and saying you're revolutionaries everyone just kinda thinks you'll grow out of it?" He grinned. "This is how you know we're just f…
Twenty freaking years. That's how long this ridiculous party has been going on in Capitol Hill. Every July, we all march up the hill and pack out the block for a madcap weekend of music and festivities at the Capitol Hill Block Party. $1 Rainiers at Sam's, free snacks everywhere, the Bus trying to …
Every week, KEXP features a new local artist with an interview and suggested tracks for where to start. This week, we’re featuring Seattle industrial punks Haunted Horses, who play Capitol Hill Block Party this Friday evening.
Each Tuesday for the next two months, KEXP will present recordings we captured during the OFF Festival in Katowice, Poland. Our excursion there in the hot days of August - made possible by the festival and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute's Don’t Panic! We’re from Poland! initiative - introduced us to…
When's the last time you listened to a record and thought to yourself, "Wow, that's a sound you don't hear every day". Calgary based post-punk quartet Viet Cong (featuring members of now-defunct Calgary act Women) drop their self-titled first LP this week on Jagjaguwar, and it's one of those record…
Following their 1995 debut, Memphis garage punk band Oblivians released two more albums in quick succession and then practically disappeared for the next twelve years. But they didn't quite slip into, well, oblivion. Band members Greg Oblivian, Jack Oblivian and Eric Oblivian -- a.k.a. Greg Cartwri…
Lots of great local releases this week, including the sophomore full-length from Seattle supergroup Childbirth, featuring members of Chastity Belt, TacocaT and Pony Time. KEXP Music Director Don Yates calls it, "a strong set of snarky garage-punk with primal, grungy guitar lines and pounding rhythm…
