Beloved New York dance-punks LCD Soundsystem have announced their first show of 2017: headlining the Forecastle Festival, taking place July 14-16 in Louisville, Kentucky. Also on the bill are Weezer, Odesza, PJ Harvey, Run the Jewels, to name just a few. Founder/frontman James Murphy announced ear…
Icelandic etherealists Sigur Rós have released a special remix of their track "Hoppípolla," exclusively for the BBC TV series Planet Earth II. This nature documentary program is presented and narrated by Sir David Attenborough. In a statement to the BBC, the band state:
In Iceland we are blessed wi…
The career of Midnight Faces frontman Matthew Doty feels like scrolling through the KEXP Blog. He began making music as a teenager with childhood friend Jonny Pierce of The Drums (who was recently in town and who we interviewed). And as a young adult, he co-founded the band Saxon Shore with Josh Ti…
Every year, it seems like the number of music festival in the great Pacific Northwest grows. While it's easy to get cynical about the overlap and general spectator approach to the music, there are diamonds in the rough. Of these, Pickathon, located on the beautiful Pendarvis Farm in Happy Valley, O…
In a sharp contrast from years past, this year's Sasquatch! Music Festival lineup has considerably less folk-inclining music on the main stage, making Lord Huron one of the weekend's folk rock acts that would play directly in front of the Columbia River Gorge. The Michigan-via-Los Angeles quintet s…
Hop Along frontwoman Frances Quinlan's distinctive voice has been compared to everything from a hurricane to sandpaper and everything in between, but what ultimately makes it so magnetic is its emotiveness, it's ability to sound human and stand out when surrounded by the pointed bluster of her band…
By the end of Greg Dulli's second set of the night at The Triple Door, there were an atypically low number of dead bodies that had sung about by the Cincinnati songwriter. But while the fictional body count remained low, there were a few overeager audience members that might have pushed up the numb…
Red Bull Sound Select are at it again: the caffeine-packed beverage people throw concerts around the world, curated by local taste-makers (KEXP has curated a few of these shows ourselves). This time around, legendary label Sub Pop Records have picked the bill, and on Wednesday, October 7th, you can…
Hey, it's another Shimmy-Disc release! Apparently I have this unconscious attraction to their catalog. When People Were Shorter and Lived Near the Water is one of those bands whose name I've noticed (how could you not?) and admired for decades, but I don't believe I've ever heard them until just no…
There is no group of people more passionate at festivals than Australians. Ineffably, Aussie bands and fans always give notable performances and serve as fervent audience members, which is why Cloud Control felt like they were playing the steps of the Sydney Opera House instead of the much-smaller …
Historically, Sasquatch has a pretty mercurial relationship with the weather; a mix of hail, pouring rain, and upper-80s temperatures aren't out of the question. Most of the time, however, there's at least one afternoon where the weather is warm but not hot, breezy but not gusty, and it enhances wh…
"Seriously? Another song?" Kristin Hersh, frontwoman for Throwing Muses, teased KEXP's DJ El Toro (a.k.a. Kurt Reighley) in mock-exasperation during their in-studio session, "We are so old, Kurt -- why are you doing this?" The veteran alt-rock legends are doing it for their latest release, Purgator…
During SXSW this year, KEXP returned to Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop and teamed up with Distiller Promo, Sub Pop Records + Hardly Art, and Merge Records for three days of free showcases featuring Dum Dum Girls, Wye Oak, Black Lips, La Luz, Hurray for the Riff Raff and many others. Between sets, we ask…
At 60 years old, Robyn Hitchcock has experienced a longevity that would be the cause for many musicians' envy. He began his career as a member of several small, local London bands until 1976 when he founded the psychedelic folk rock group The Soft Boys. In 1981 (about a year after The Soft Boys bro…
Montreal experimental band Suuns have grown in leaps and bounds in the last couple years. No doubt, their debut LP Zeroes QC was a solid entry point, with a clever mixture of noise and pop and a good sampling through the various electronic derivations of alternative rock we’ve seen in the last 20 y…
Welcome to a start new vision of the apocalypse. Nick Cave may have soundtracked the movie adaption of Cormac McCarthy's The Road back in 2009, but with Welcome oblivion, Trent Reznor gives us a glitchy concept album realization of a similar internal battle that will keep you up at night with just …
2013 continues to bolt out of the gate with another solid week of new releases. With the long awaited followup to their well-received 2009 debut, Local Natives top our list of must-buys. Hummingbird finds the Silver Lake, Los Angeles, group pushing into new territories of song structure, challengin…
At a festival, it's rare to get a performance that feels "intimate." It's something most fans reconcile with before they ever enter the gates and scan their wristbands. So walking into the KEXP Gathering Space on Saturday afternoon at the Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival and finding the crowd …
