Sharon Van Etten wrote and recorded a new song inspired by the horrible events of the Pulse Club shooting in Orlando back in June. "Not Myself" is a beautiful and haunting tribute to the victims. Proceeds will go to the gun control nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety. [Pitchfork]In her statement, V…
Pioneering hip-hop trio De La Soul share another new track from their forthcoming full-length, and the Anonymous Nobody…. Check out the single "Drawn" below, featuring special guests Little Dragon. Their ninth album hits stores on August 26th, and on that very day, KEXP will go 3 Feet High & R…
Northwest indie icons Modest Mouse go medieval in the clip for “The Ground Walks, With Time in a Box,” a highlight from their latest full-length Strangers to Ourselves. In the video, frontman Isaac Brock portrays a maniacal ruler in a post-apocalyptic world, with a dagger for a microphone and a br…
'90s-revivalists Speedy Ortiz go all the way back to the '70s for their cover of the Sibylle Baier song "Lost Something In The Hills." The obscure German folk-singer had recorded songs at home on a reel-to-reel recorder, and when none other than J Mascis got his hands on a copy, he helped Baier's …
Did you know about the current infestation of pythons that Florida is facing? Yeah! They're eating all the small animals and slowly squeezing the biodiversity out of the region - but there is a different python at work in Surfer Blood's new album, Pythons. It's a surf rock kind of slippery happy su…
Few bands pack the emotional wallop of Cloud Cult. Ever the seekers, the Midwest band has always tackled the big questions, the universal, philosophical and existential one -- who are we, where do we come from, where do we go, what do we do with each other while we're here? Cloud Cult albums are li…
The Cure celebrate their fortieth anniversary this year. Let that soak in for a second. Then consider that the English quintet are playing three-plus hour sets with multiple encores night after night. Needless to say, Robert Smith and the current Cure lineup are doing right their legacy night after…
Well, doesn't that photo look weird? But, it's time to face the new line-up for Death Cab for Cutie: the band will release their first album without founding member Chris Walla, titled Kintsugi. What's a "Kintsugi", you might ask? It's a style of Japanese art where broken ceramics are fixed using …
Portland's Moon Duo made maybe one of their most surprising moves yet: showing up and playing a set as a trio. Alright, that's not totally true. They did play with a third member on the KEXP Stage at the Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival, but the band is constantly taking surprising new avenues…
"Oh London moon, help me stumble home, help me lose myself along the way." So begins the return of Broken Bells, the all-too-perfect team up between now legendary producer Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) and the genius songwriter who gave us the Shins, James Mercer. After The Disco is the soundtrack to…
I assumed when I pulled out this record by 17 Pygmies that this would be one of those bands who released a DJ-beloved album or two in the '80s and then quietly dissolved, leaving almost no trace to survive into this Internet age of ours. How wrong I was! It turns out this band - originally a Savage…
White Lung's frontwoman Mish Way is nothing less than a singular, commanding singer, but the ferocious spirit that fuels her performances is empowering, not intimidating. On the band's latest album, Deep Fantasy, Way and guitarist Kenneth William, drummer Anne-Marie Vassiliou, and bassist Hether Fo…
Augustines's new album is cause to rejoice -- as much for the band as for fans. From the ashes Pela, the Brooklyn band beloved by KEXP listeners but embattled by a disinterested music industry, songwriters Billy McCarthy and Eric Sanderson formed this new band named after their shared birth month, …
After selling out their first show (Dec. 12) at Key Arena in just 15 minutes, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis decided to add a second performance on December 11. That one sold out in two hours. The guys have so much love for their hometown that they've now added a third show, this one is set for Decem…
"Good evening" or "we're Iceage from Copenhagan, Denmark" wasn't the first thing that Iceage frontman Elias Bender Rønnenfelt said when the Danish four-piece arrived onstage. It wasn't even a simple "hello". It was a startling, guttural grunt that soared over the opening chords of "On My Fingers". …
It's uncanny that yesterday just happened to be Australia Day, and the highlights of this week's new releases are dominated by the down under! Merge Records release the latest from Melbourne pop quartet Twerps, which KEXP Music Director Don Yates notes is, "a masterful album of jangly indie-pop rem…
“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…
