Seattle Center was the place to be last Friday night as Brooklyn band A Place to Bury Strangers brought a sonic thunder to the Mural Amphitheatre stage. As you can see from the photos below, it was an explosive performance! Local trio Wimps kicked off the evening, and Portland's Matt Drenik brought…
Gorillaz is a project that was birthed from Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s long nights of subjecting themselves to MTV music videos. The idea was that the band would be a comment on the lack of substance in the videos that they repetitively sacrificed their eyes and minds to. That was in 1998, an…
Named for the famed BBC DJ John Peel, Peel Dream Magazine is a new shoegaze drone noise project out of Brooklyn from the mind of Joe Stevens. Now a four piece, their latest album, Agitprop Alterna, was just released last week and was recorded in a freezing practice space near his home.
Considering the members' other projects, Filthy Friends' collective resume is completely stacked - having Corin Tucker, Peter Buck, and Scott McCaughey in your ranks will do that - but it's remarkable how loose and low-stakes this performance of ripping guitars and pounding drums so…
With three songwriters and a wave of melodic guitars behind them, LVL UP have more depth and nuance than most of their peers, but their music is never ostentatious about its DIY majesty. The Brooklyn quartet join Cheryl Waters in the KEXP studio to tell the story of how they went from being three …
Second on today's broadcast live from KEX Hostel at Iceland Airwaves music festival was the incomparable Digable Planets. Formed in Brooklyn in 1992, the poet-rappers, comprised of Ishmael "Butterfly" Butler, Mary Ann "Ladybug Mecca" Vieira and Craig "Doodlebug" Irving, continue to push the limits …
There's a new pop-savvy sheriff in Sub Pop town, and he goes by the name of Cullen Omori, and instead of having to wield a Smith Western to corral a crowd's attention, all he has to do is coo his name. Omori quickly became a wunderkind as one of the instrumental brains of the Chicagoan outfit Smith…
Among the constant changing tides of the music industry and the struggle forward for artists to learn to adapt and improvise to find new ways to make it on the modern scene, it's nice to know sometimes that you can't keep a good man down. At least, that principle holds for Dan Boeckner. The masterm…
Radiohead fans are tweaking for today's release of Thom Yorke's new project, Atoms for Peace. The group - featuring producer Nigel Godrich on keys, Ultraista's Joey Waronker on drums, Flea on bass, and Forro in the Dark founder Mauro Refosco on additional percussion - formed originally as the backi…
Next on KEXP live from Kex Hostel at Iceland Airwaves Music Festival was the first non-Icelandic band of this year's broadcast. Operators is the new synth-pop project from Canadian musician Dan Boeckner (Wolf Parade/Divine Fits/Handsome Furs). A ray of sun after the bright but melancholy cloud of D…
LoneLady is the music project of British vocalist/guitarist Julie Campbell, an artist heavily inspired by the post-punk and leftfield-disco movements of the early 1980s. She's tweaked these influential, groovy sounds to her own liking over two albums released on the esteemed UK label Warp Records a…
It's been twelve long years, but there's finally a new album from UK pop giants Blur out today! KEXP Music Director Don Yates describes their eighth album as "a strong return-to-form incorporating everything from classic-sounding, crunchy Brit-pop to excursions into spacy electro-pop, brooding, dub…
Seattle's Dreamsalon gets you right away with their tight rhythms, deep bass and quick, quirky melodies. Ever since 2011, they've been rocking as a cohesive unit spilling out songs with high energy. We wanted to catch up with bass player Min Yee to get his thoughts on the project, how the band memb…
One of the highlights of last year's Icelandic Airwaves Festival was the live session we did with Icelandic supergroup Drangar, recorded at Sigur Rós' Sundlaugin (or "Swimming Pool") studio. The three bandmates — Mugison, Jónas Sigurðsson and Ómar Guðjónsson — each highly respected musicians with …
Ex-Red Red Meat frontman Tim Rutili's music project Califone have revealed a dazzling video for "Magdalene" from last year's Stitches album. The song itself is flawless and the amazing animation manages to elevate it further. Enjoy a stunning five-minute reprieve from reality, below. [Stereogum]
Morning Show host John Richards discovers hidden gems in this heavy vibed mix of pop and beats, featuring the swirling eclectic sounds of local Seattle project Eggshells, the urgent rumbling guitars of The Districts and much more. 1. Elisa Ambrogio - Superstitious 2. Eggshells - In the Backgroun…
The whole time I drove home from the Trust show, I kept looking in the rearview expecting to see cops trying to get me to pull over. In fact, I don't think the strobing reds and blues have stopped in my brain since the show ended, even two days later. Red and blue and red and blue and red and blue …
"There are so many mountains in the world, but not all of them are on the top 10 list... but if you stand on top of one, you feel like you're on the highest point on earth." This is the concept behind super-duo Minor Alps. Multi-talented musicians Matthew Caws of Nada Surf and Juliana Hatfield do j…
Decibel Festival's Optical showcases serve to remove the notion that electronic music is simply made for dancing. Instead, they present an array of musicians who specialize in everything from neo-classical to drone to ambient to horror soundtracks. For its 10th anniversary, Decibel brought back bel…
Today marks the release of Dormarion, the third full-length from Seattle power pop project Telekinesis. The band was in-studio this morning celebrating its released, and a couple of weeks ago they played a bunch of material from the new album for the crowd assembled at Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop in…
