Macefielders, come out and play! That's the rallying cry for the independent music and arts festival in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood each fall. Good news for those ready - the Macefield Music Festival, named for Edith Macefield, the fiercely-independent Ballard resident who refused to sell her ho…
What happens when you strip away the feedback and distortion that defines a genre like shoegaze? Without all the fuzz, what of value remains? In the case of British band Ride, apparently quite a lot. Somewhat like shaving a cat only to find a bigger one underneath, we discovered during an acoustic …
The penultimate act on our roster for day one of KEXP's Iceland Airwaves broadcast, live from KEX Hostel in Reykjavik is another fantastic Icelandic band, Valdimar. Both of Valdimar’s albums, Undraland (2010) and Um Stund (2012), have seen quite a lot of commercial success in their native Iceland, …
Is it weird that I actually noticed that singer Jason Bartell was wearing the same star studded shirt today at Sasquatch that he was wearing during Fang Island's session in 2010 at KEXP? I only notice because that's one way I think of their music - the sincerity of their power chord power stance pe…
Had they come around some 25 years ago, Nashville's Wild Cub would surely have been "pretty in pink." Formed only a year ago by singer/songwriter Keegan DeWitt and multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Bullock, the Nashville group sounds less like their Music City contemporaries and more like they belong on…
Seattle duo Crater - Ceci Gomez and Kessiah Gordon - stopped by for an in-studio, both to play us some tracks from their debut, Talk to Me so I Can Fall Asleep, and to talk to DJ Sharlese about drooling in their sleep and The Sims "Hot Date" Expansion Pack. Crater only emerged in 2014 to immediate …
This Friday, KEXP, Seattle Center and No Depression are teaming up to bring you an excellent line up for the first of August's Concerts at the Mural! Take advantage of this unique opportunity to discover your new favorite band or enjoy independent artists you already love for FREE! If that's not en…
When the most recent Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds album, Skeleton Tree, hit stores earlier this fall, it was accompanied by the release of the documentary, One More Time With Feeling, a gorgeous, if heart-wrenching, feature-length film on the making of the album. The film returns to theaters on D…
Local lad Will Toledo -- better known to KEXP listeners as Car Seat Headrest -- shares a new video today for the track "Vincent" off the upcoming Matador Records release Teens of Denial, out this Spring (not to be confused with the previous release, Teens of Style). As the YouTube caption states: …
Car Seat Headrest came dressed for success to their first KEXP in-studio session. Adorned in suits and ties, the young Seattle band got down to business with a fantastic five-song set of lo-fi epic indie rock. Despite his relatively young age, frontman and songwriter Will Toledo (reportedly just 22…
Earlier this month, we reported on the fantastic pairing of Matt Berninger of The National and Ramona Falls’ Brent Knopf, recording under the name EL VY (pronounced like the plural of Elvis). Today, Berninger explains a bit more about their forthcoming debut, Return to the Moon, out October 30th o…
It’s time again for Friday on My Mind. Our weekly blog post where we look at videos centered around one common theme. This is a collaborative effort between KEXP and King 5 News. Next Tuesday is Cinco de Mayo and we all know that means - time to drink. Or at least that’s what it tends to mean for a…
First band on air for the 2013 Iceland Airwaves broadcast, live from KEX Hostel, is the 14-man Samúel Jón Samúelsson Big Band. First formed in early 2000 for a short series of performances in their native Iceland, the band was reformed in 2007 and released their first studio album Fynkur. In addit…
Beck released the effervescent pop album Colors this past fall and today he's shared a cute video for the track "Fix Me." Directed by Brook Linder, the clip focuses on the true story of a little girl in Japan named Mame who lives with three poodles that dress up in a variety of costumes. The four o…
After releasing a pretty great teaser (in an era of pretty awful album trailers) for the album last week, Neko Case has released some more concrete details about her sixth studio album, The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You, which will arrive on September…
If you haven't already heard of the riff heavy, eternally energetic, best stage banter you might ever hear (seriously) Dude York, then we're not sure where you've been. Not only have they been on our own Audioasis recently, but they have been dropping bomb after bomb of incredible EP's since their …
Their name spoofs the The Shangri-Las, their songs check the sounds of the 60's, from British Invasion to West Coast country rock -- the record store rats of Allah-Las have long been interested in contextualizing the history of rock with the music of today, both with their on-going, lost classics-u…
Chaz Bundick, who now goes by Chaz Bear, has announced a new Toro Y Moi album, Boo Boo, and shared a video for its first single, "Girl Like You." Boo Boo will be released July 7th via Carpark. In a lengthy statement about the album, Bear describes falling into a crisis of identity because of his fa…
Geotic is the alias of Los Angeles' Will Wiesenfeld, a multi-faceted artist that also releases music under the name Baths. His works under the Geotic moniker have often been self-categorized as "passive listening" music, quietly providing a home for his more ambient and meditative creations that fa…
Anyone who's seen the video where a meteor falls during a Modest Mouse show while they're playing "Dark Center of the Universe" knows that it was a perfect synchronization of life and music, coincidental or not. And while there's no footage of it – yet – let it be known that case/lang/veirs summone…
