Alejandro Escovedo - that's all I knew about the True Believers when KEXP's lineup for SXSW at Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop was first announced. OK, then someone mentioned it was his mid 80's band, a crew that had a brush with fame, but never quite broke through. They had label issues, personnel cha…
DJ Taye -- the alias of Chicago native Dante Sanders -- is a member of the revered Teklife crew, joining the influential collective of juke/footwork artists in 2010 at the age of 16. His head-spinning beats, booming bass, and frantically cut-up samples proudly exemplify Teklife's genre-defining sou…
Whatever your personal opinion of her may be, there is one fact that is truly undeniable: Lana Del Rey is in a league of her own. If you don't believe me, read her fantastically revealing cover piece with Fader. If you don't feel like it, listen to her albums, watch her videos, read other interview…
The record label Cinco7 Discos y Tapes has released a punk record made entirely through artificial intelligence. The label's founder Alejandro Chouza explains how.
Los Angeles' Adrian Younge is a self-taught musician and highly sought-after analogue soul/funk/R&B/hip-hop producer. Bursting onto the music scene with his soundtrack to the 2009 blaxploitation parody/homage flick Black Dynamite, Younge has emerged as a distinctive artist and recording enginee…
Welsh singer and producer Kelly Lee Owens has been making waves as a captivating solo artist in the underground music community over the past few years, blending immersive techno, ethereal dream-pop, and hypnotic krautrock to create her own singular style. She's released a string of hotly-tipped EP…
Tuxedo is the collaborative project between Michigan-raised, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter/producer Mayer Hawthorne and veteran Seattle-based producer Jake One. Bonding over a shared love of early 1980s boogie, disco, funk, and R&B, the pair soon connected to create modern-day jams steepe…
Many in the area have known Seattle's Success for a while, but it was last year that these hometown heroes got some love on a national level. Their breakout LP, Radio Recovery, was released by Chicago indie label Red Scare Industries and the quartet accepted tour offers from bands like Masked Intr…
Last month, Street Sounds went old school, featuring veterans of hip-hop Mobb Deep, who've been keeping it real since the early 90's, when New York MC's Havoc and Prodigy first made a name for themselves depicting hardcore street life and became key players in the East Coast rivalry with West Coast…
Once again, Sub Pop and KEXP are teaming up to present a very special Record Store Day release! In 2012, we offered the now out-of-print and highly-coveted Shabazz Palaces: Live at KEXP EP. And, now, in 2014, we will offer: Mudhoney On Top: KEXP Presents Mudhoney Live on Top of the Space Needle LP.…
It's been "a long time coming" — The Head and the Heart's own Josiah Johnson said what was on all of their fans' minds. Though only two years have elapsed since local label Sub Pop released their self-titled debut, the Seattle band had been making a name for themselves well before, and given their …
Dee Dee, songwriter and main force behind the Dum Dum Girls, stopped by the KEXP studio to chat with Stevie Zoom and perform alone with just her heavy-tremolo-ed guitar. Her Girls-less performance is a throwback to the early 2008 to 2010 years, which saw Dee Dee's first CDR release on her own label…
Perhaps no other duo has collaborated, toured with or been covered by as wide a range of artists as Tegan and Sara. Canadian twin sisters Tegan and Sara Quin, who have been making music together since they were in high school, have toured with the likes of Neil Young, whose label they were first si…
Seattle independent artist Mark Diamond was surprised when he was able to pay his rent through song streams on Spotify. He later got picked up by a subsidiary label of Universal Music, only to realize he was making less money with the support of a label.
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Rounding out our last day of the KEXP broadcast live from Kex Hostel at Iceland Airwaves Music Festival is Icelandic dream-pop band Vök. Formed in 2013 as a duo (singer Margrét Rán Magnúsdóttir and saxophonist Andri Már Enoksson) to enter Músíktilraunir (or "Musical Experiment Contest")--a battle o…
Next on KEXP's Iceland Airwaves broadcast live from Kex Hostel was Icelandic band Low Roar. Low Roar is the brainchild of American Ryan Karazija, who moved to Reykjavik from Oakland, CA in 2010. To combat the loneliness of moving to a strange new place, he recorded his self-titled debut on his lapt…
Saturday wrapped up another year of All Tomorrow's Parties Iceland, hosted in Keflavík at Atlantic Studios. Younghusband played their second and original time slot on the main stage. Ought from Canada (who are on the same label as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, who played the day before), and HAM, wh…
It's nice to pick up a relatively obscure album from the KEXP stacks and discover that it's found a bit of new life in this century. It's not exactly a mysterious discovery along the lines of Light in the Attic's release of L'amour (though I will be looking for a vintage copy of that gem next time …
"I'm sorry, I have to interrupt. My mind was just blown," DJ Cheryl Waters revealed after Milagres opened their recent in-studio session at KEXP with "The Letterbomb." With its funky drums and shifts between baritone and falsetto, it's easy to see why Milagres' music made her feel this way. In fac…
Thurston Moore has nothing to prove after decades spent as part of one of the most influential bands of all time, Sonic Youth. The guitarist, singer, and songwriter has long been worshiped by SY fans and adored by critics as Sonic Youth evolved from brash indie upstarts in the 80s, to semi-commerc…
