All of my music nerd friends are in trouble. How is that I've lived on this earth over 40 years - during which period Garland Jeffreys has released 12 of his 14 solo albums to date (with number 15 due this spring) - and the first I heard of this guy is when I pulled this record off the shelf to tak…
It's been a year since the release of David Bowie's Blackstar, the #1 Album of 2016, as voted on by KEXP listeners. And to mark what would have been his 70th birthday, an EP has been released featuring some of the last songs this musical icon recorded, including “No Plan”, “Killing a Little Time”,…
Rounding out a stunning second day of the KEXP Broadcast live from KEX Hostel at Iceland Airwaves Music festival are the incomparable Kronos Quartet. The San Francisco-based string quartet has been around for over 40 years, with a roster of rotating musicians, currently comprised of David Harringto…
KEXP's stellar lineup at Bumbershoot continues with festival heavy-hitter Michael Franti & Spearhead live on the Secret Stage. Franti has his fingers in many pots. He’s a poet, rapper, and singer-songwriter, who has been spreading positivity all over the world since 1994 with his current projec…
They've been teasing us with the news for a while now, but today, we finally have new music from Bon Iver to share! Two new songs, in fact. Check out the creatively-spelled tracks "22 (OVER S∞∞N)" and "10 d E A T h b R E a s T ⚄ ⚄" below. (Your move, M.I.A.!) Both will appear on their forthcoming …
Every so often (OK, fairly regularly) I pull out a record with a name that seems vaguely familiar only to realize that I am way out of my depth. Peter Hammill has a long, storied, and critically acclaimed career that is pretty much the reason they invented things like Wikipedia and Allmusic.com. I …
Dilating their punkish pupils since their debut release Hard Life, Brooklyn’s Big Eyes set their sights on a musically matured sound for their sophomore 2013 album, Almost Famous. Ingrained within the Seattle scene in both sights and sonics, KEXP caught up with singer/songwriter Kait Eldridge to d…
From the beginning, much of the praise directed at Courtney Barnett has been centered on her talents as a clever, affecting lyricist. While that praise is completely deserved – you don’t get away with naming your debut Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit unless you’ve got the incisiv…
Cambridge's WMBR, in addition to being key to the development of my musical tastes in general, is a big part of my fascination with these old records and what a bunch of college DJs thought of them. There was (and I'm sure still is) a lot to love about the station, but Pipeline!, their weekly local…
Tune in this Saturday, September 13th for another special all-electronic edition of Audioasis as KEXP and the city of Seattle gears up for this year's Decibel Festival happening September 24th through September 28th. Hosted by DJ Alex and co-produced with the help and guidance of Audioasis host DJ …
You might never expect this to happen to you: strolling through the woods, lulled by an enchanting melody, sorrowful yet sweet, and finding not some wandering minstrel strumming in a sun-dappled clearing but a 5-member band set up with an organ, an upright bass, and a full-sized harp. That's the sc…
Room Nine were, it seems, a pretty big deal in Seattle in the late '80s; like Diamond Fist Werny, they were another band doing their own thing — with their own lighting designer! — while it probably seemed like everyone around them was churning out noisy, grungy rock. Room Nine broke up not long af…
Okay, not "exactly" music news, but it's just been announced that none other than Stephen Colbert will take over for David Letterman as the host of CBS' The Late Show in 2015! Letterman announced his retirement earlier this month with a performance from Joseph Arthur, accompanied by R.E.M.'s Mike …
Known to many as the band who introduced the “post-dubstep” era, Mount Kimbie have always defied expectation. After meeting at college in London and bonding over a shared love of electronic music, the UK duo of Dominic Maker and Kai Campos explored the spaces around the popular dance music of 2008 …
Across the last few years, Neko Case has been more active on her Twitter feed than in the studio. That's not a dig - Case remains a prolific and fascinating online personality - but nearly 43,000 tweets later, she (impressively) hasn't revealed much about herself on the social network beyond a hand…
Back to school, back to work, back to record shopping. This post-Labor Day week, it's time to get off your duffs and get back out into the world. To get you motivated is a handful of fantastic new releases, many of which you'll find getting major spins on the KEXP airwaves. Among them, is the lates…
Toronto rave gods Crystal Castles are known for their brutally intense live show. Alice Glass smokes nearly an entire pack of cigarettes on stage and makes some good progress on a bottle of Jack Daniels, while Ethan Kath barely looks up from his table, making sure that every pulsing bass drop shake…
If current trends continue, Thurston Moore will evoke the true spirit of rock and roll musicianship and artistry until the day of his death. 35 years into his career, he and his band of extravagantly talented musicians in Chelsea Light Moving are making hard and heavy rock with just as edge and dem…
Only 14 months after the release of their sixth album, Valtari, Sigur Ros have announced details about their seventh. Entitled Kveikur (which roughly translate to "priming" in English), the nine track effort will arrive on June 18th via XL Recordings. Now a trio after the departure of multi-instrum…
