Avant-garde electronic music is probably the last thing people think of when they hear “dinner theater”, but that’s exactly what Decibel Festival attendees got if they were lucky enough to snag a spot at the sold out Optical 1 showcase. After fine dining courtesy of the famed Wild Ginger kitchen, a…
Good music may be one of the few things Iceland and Austin, Texas, have in common. Kaleo is a perfect example of that bond. The Austin-based Icelandic four-piece dance around their influences while delivering songs with such diverse sound you wonder if their songs all come from the same band. But u…
It's mind-boggling how a place so small can create so much terrific music. This year, as I was compiling my list of top Icelandic releases, I couldn't help but wonder if I'd find as many great albums as last year and the year before. Would I find ten? Twenty? Actually, as it turns out, a lot more! …
Where does one begin with R. Stevie Moore? That's what I've been asking myself, and likely what most people ask themselves when faced with the enormity of his recorded output. Well, you've got to start somewhere, and since I happened to pull this record off the shelves, and it seems to have been a …
This week, Seattle lost a shining star as legendary producer Rick Parashar passed away on Thursday. With his brother Raj, Rick Parashar founded London Bridge Studios, where many of Seattle's iconic records were recorded, including Pearl Jam's Ten, Soundgarden's Louder Than Love, Alice in Chains' Di…
While there was often a healthy debate on any given album's merits at KCMU, every once in a while it seems that everybody just ganged up on some poor defenseless record for no good reason. Icky Joey (not a name familiar to me until I pulled this record off the shelf) was a super group of sorts, fea…
Every year, Seattle sends a multitude of great artists down to Austin this week to showcase how our great city continues push the independent music scene forward in our own unique way. Of course, there is no shortage of Seattle bands at SXSW this year. But it was a special treat for us to get to se…
On any given weekend in Seattle, there are a million amazing shows to see - from jazz sets at coffee shops and orchestras at theaters, to a grunge shows in DIY spaces and major touring acts at any of our larger venues. Maybe this weekend you want to try something new; maybe you heard one song by th…
For good reason, Foals have earned a reputation for some wild and frenetic peformances, mixing high energy math rock with modern take on 90's Britpop. It's not really a show if frontman Yannis Philippakis isn't surfing the crowd or climbing the walls. Yet Foals have never been one-dimension and thr…
Despite being recorded in December, Lavender Diamond's in-studio session was one of the warmest things that KEXP broadcast in 2012. Singer Becky Stark's voice is nothing short of radiant, buoying the Los Angeles quartet's tender, winsome sound. Across the folk pop bounce of "There's A Perfect Love …
Cleveland post-punk band Cloud Nothings are following up this year's Life Without Sound with a new track, "Relief." The previously unreleased demo is a contribution to a forthcoming benefit compilation, Taking It To Heart, Volume Two, which is raising money for the Heart And Stroke Foundation. Fron…
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…
Fauna Shade is on a hot streak. After releasing their fantastic debut album, Baton Rouge, last year, the group followed it up in March with the equally good Floral Hall EP. Combining psych rock with pop-esque melodies, the group from Everett brought an excellent balance of dark garage-tinged instru…
Anticipation for physical copies of the new album by Car Seat Headrest will have to last a bit longer. The CDs and LPs of Teens Of Denial, originally due in stores on May 20, were recalled due to a misunderstanding, of sorts. The track "Just What I Needed / Not Just What I Needed", containing parts…
Record Store Day is monumental in Seattle in a way that isn't seen in the rest of the country: we crawl out of whatever grunge holes we live in and slither over to the nearest record stores and start feeding on vinyl, eating 45s, and rubbing the sleeves all over our bodies, happily rolling around i…
Both Friday and Saturday's Decibel Festival festivities were stacked top to bottom with incredibly good sets, at pretty much every venue in the greater Seattle area. And somehow this year, the festival organizers have done an incredible job at giving each set an incredible sense of creative continu…
Five years is way too long for a visit from Midlake, but let's just say the hauntingly-beautiful folk-rock group from Denton, Texas had a good reason. After spending two years recording in the farm, frontman and founding member Tim Smith announced he was leaving the band. Rather than break-up, the …
There's one aspect to booking Man or Astro-Man? for an in-studio session that the band didn't reveal until they were on air. "We steal one thing from you guys, and if you figure out what it is, we'll give it back." Well, we don't think they took anything when they stopped by KEXP's studio in March,…
