Next on the KEXP live video stream from KEX Hostel at Iceland Airwaves Music Festival was brand-new band Andy Svarthol. Comprised of brothers Egill and Bjarki Hreinn Viðarsson). Andy Svarthol came together in 2015 after Egill’s other project Nóra went on hiatus. They aren’t even in the festival’s o…
Chaz Bundick is an endless whirlwind of creativity, whether recording as Toro Y Moi or as PLUM, Les Sins, or Sides of Chaz. Now he's got another project to add to the list: a collaboration with sibling duo The Mattson 2. The LP is titled (wait for it) Chaz Bundick Meets the Mattson 2, and it hits …
Forget anything you might already think about Northwest electronica. For all of our gloomy and rain-sodden days and our fern-covered evergreen terrain, we sometimes produce bubbly and even tropical music. Take, for instance, Bellingham producer/multi-instrumentalist Grant Eadie, who with his projec…
The bass-wielding demigod known as Jah Wobble (né John Wardle, renamed by Sid Vicious, who also allegedly gave him his first bass) should need no introduction, especially around these parts, but here's the quick version: First heard holding down the low end with PiL, he soon moved on to his own var…
Despite keeping busy with his Run the Jewels project, Atlanta MC Killer Mike shares a previously unreleased track "Saks Fifth" which you can stream below. Stereogum points out, it's mostly likely an older track as Mike shouts out his old Grind Time Rap Gang crew and his short-lived Grand Hustle la…
Effortlessly weaving notes together to create airy, meandering harmonies, Shana Cleveland truly shines in the KEXP studio. In comparing Cleveland's other music project La Luz, which has has quickly gained a respectable fan base over the past years, Shana Cleveland & The Sandcastles' 6-year time…
Matt Johnson's The The is yet another band (or musical project, if you prefer, since it seems to have been Johnson and whatever troupe of brilliant musicians he could round up when it came time to make a record) that I never listened to in their heyday/my youth, and I can't quite figure out why. Ma…
It's the classic peanut butter meets chocolate kind of story. A chance meeting, or really, a shared bill, brought Amelia Meath (of the harmonizing folk trio Mountain Man) and Nick Sanborn (of psychsters Megafaun and his own electronic project, Made of Oak) together. A conversation led to the two sh…
Seattle. 1998. The Murder City Devils, a band of Seattle's top garage punks, is playing shows with Pacific Northwestern 90s greats Pearl Jam, Built to Spill, and The Black Halos. Flash forward to 2014, and the band has gone through three albums, a deficit of one member, and most importantly, one br…
The first performance of our Hood to Hood 2013 broadcast is a special collaborative performance by Jon Russell, Damien Jurado, and Tomo Nakayama, all Seattle based singer-songrwriters. So far Jon Russell has played just one show as a solo musician, an acoustic show at Neumos, though he has been pla…
After being pretty quiet for several years, Future Bible Heroes -- one of the projects of The Magnetic Fields mastermind Stephen Merritt and his collaborators Claudia Gonson and Christopher Ewen -- are making a big re-entrance into the music world with their soon-to-be-released box set Memories of …
Nu-disco god Andy Butler and his Hercules and Love Affair project have been blowing our minds for years now. With the self-titled, Butler cultivated a disco masterpiece, full of slow burn and tainted love that needed to be danced to. Then, with last year's excellent Blue Songs, he moved in a slight…
Earlier this week, Fever Ray surprised fans with a new album, the first in eight years for this solo project from Karin Dreijer Andersson, frontwoman for the Swedish duo The Knife. KEXP Music Director Don Yates calls it "an excellent set of adventurous, noise-addled electro-pop combining buzzing sy…
The harsh cold air bites at my hands as I walk toward the Tractor Tavern to see Pedro The Lion play their first Seattle show in 11 years. The harshness of freezing breeze turns my thoughts to Pedro The Lion's "The Longest Winter." "In time memories fade, senses numb," the young David Bazan sings on…
This Saturday, KEXP presents Reykjavik Calling, the sister city showcase featuring some of the best bands and artists emerging from Seattle and Reykjavik. It's our seventh year featuring this cross-cultural musical exploration, and one of the two acts traveling here from Iceland is long-time KEXP f…
This weekend, Saturday, April 29th and Sunday, April 30th, KEXP is proud to co-host the Punk Rock Flea Market alongside our neighbors at the The Vera Project and SIFF. More than 100 vendors will be scattered across our three buildings, and there will be DJs, booze, food, and live music from Bacteri…
Super-ambient Icelandic duo Kiasmos brought their very space-y minimalist brand of techno to the new KEXP live room in support of their Swept EP, the second they dropped in 2015. The two longtime friends began working professionally together when Ólafur Arnalds was the touring sound engineer for Ja…
"Sin Fang in a box", Cheryl Waters called it. It's how Sindri Már Sigfússon solved the problem of taking his Sin Fang project on the road, especially outside of his native Iceland, when he couldn't manage to bring a full band with him. But more importantly, it's also a creative interpretation of hi…
It's not often that the Review Revue files intersect with what's going on in the present day, due to the archive-digging nature of this project, but every once in a while we get lucky. This week's band, Pere Ubu - perhaps one of the longest-lived bands I've covered in this series - is playing tomor…
Fearlessly dabbling in the gaudy with their electro pop sound, Future Bible Heroes began as a project of The Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt and DJ Christopher Ewen, but gradually evolved into a substantial group of talented musicians. Eleven years after the release of their sophomore album, Etern…
