“Put your hands up if you love hip-hop!” shouted De La Soul as they opened a killer set of their career spanning hits cherished by fans of old and probably more than a few brand new fans. New York hip hop band of the last 25 years, De La Soul truly are masters of the craft and made it damn well kno…
Okay, I have no idea what is going on here, and for once the Internet and KMCU DJ comments are mostly giving me more questions than answers. Starting with Discogs, which seems to have the only solid info on this release out there, we have before us an album from early 1984 by The Seclusions, featur…
New mix, same damn luck! Cheryl Waters is back with another selection of goodies that's bound to help you find your new musical obsession. Settle in for tracks from Sevdaliza, Anjimile, Cherry Glazerr, BIIANCO, and more.
If volume is your only musical qualifier, then there is probably only one band on your best of 2013 list. San Francisco metal duo Deafheaven dropped Sunbather last month, a seven track sonic masterpiece that relentlessly pulls at your heartstrings and threatens hearing damage for 60 minutes. The al…
Thao Nguyen is a voice of the people. While her music leans a bit more toward peppy indie pop than hippy folk rock, Thao's songs on her fourth LP, We The Common, are about the individual experiences and personal interactions we all have. As she says about the new Thao & The Get Down Stay Down a…
We've finally got a release date to announce for the new Run the Jewels! The highly-anticipated RTJ3 hits the internet as a free download on January 13th, with physical copies to follow, same day in North America and January 20th everywhere else. Special guests include Kamasi Washington (who, inci…
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…
With a bright blue mantra and neon promise to boot, Cut Copy return this year with their fourth LP Free Your Mind. Dan Whitford and the gang don't seem to be slowing down much in their second decade together. Zonoscope, the band's 2011 award-winning classic, took the band's one of a kind combinatio…
How about that lineup, am I right?! Holy smokes, I don't think I've seen an undercard that solid on a lineup in years. Good luck figuring your schedule out, everyone! It's going to be damn near impossible to catch all of the phenomenal talent coming to the Gorge this year for the Sasquatch! Music F…
Well, that was a long time coming, but I'll be damned if that could have been any better than it was. Death From Above 1979 made a great record back in 2004 - like a really great record. You're A Woman, I'm A Machine put DFA 1979 on the map like clockwork, feeding the band with plenty of live dates…
"Music can't be everything." Damn, that is not something you want to hear sung softly by the likes of UK bass pioneer and R&B crooner James Blake. And yet, this is how he closes out his third LP, as "Meet You In The Maze" fades out into oblivion, and the synthesized harmonies fizzle apart into …
To call James Blake's second LP "greatly anticipated" may be a bit of an overstatement, but only because it's been hardly two months that we've even known that a new album would be available some time this year. Despite the short time to process the news, fans certainly were eager to hear what the …
Damn, 2013, you are looking good! You just keep hitting us week after week with one killer list of new releases after another. This week, there's no way we're not going to run out to pick up the latest from long-time KEXP favorite Frightened Rabbit. As if there was any doubt that this would land hi…
2011's Hurry Up, We're Dreaming didn't just turn M83 into a triple-A critical darling and unexpected commercial success, it pushed the band to become one of the biggest and outright best acts on the live circuit. Taking their records' widescreen ambitions and bringing them to life with a huge, bord…
After four days and eighteen sessions, there was no real way to sum up KEXP's time at SXSW 2013, but Ozomatli's multi-cultural, multi-genre, and multi-lingual set came pretty damn close to summing up the wide variety of artists that stopped by Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop that week. Playing one of fiv…