How many indie rock dudes does it take to cover a Sharon Van Etten song? By our count, four, as footage has surfaced of a 2010 concert where Bon Iver's Justin Vernon, Bryce and Aaron Dessner of The National, and Colin Stetson covered her single "Love More." Watch below. The footage comes from a Mu…
All hail Father John Misty, whose sophomore release I Love You, Honeybear comes out tomorrow on Sub Pop. Watch the charismatic performer turn out an acoustic rendition of "I Went to the Store One Day" in a French café, via La Blogothèque's famed "Take Away Show" series. And tune in to KEXP tomorro…
Last month, we shared the first wave of bands playing the 2015 Treefort Music Fest, March 25th - 29th, 2015 in downtown Boise, Idaho. Today, we've got the next batch to share, and it's a doozy! Hometown heroes Built to Spill will take the stage, as well as Syrian artist Omar Souleyman. Both of Mont…
When Sólstafir plays for KEXP, the gods take notice. Two years ago, during KEXP's broadcast at Iceland Airwaves, hurricane-level gales swept across Reykjavik as the hard rocking band brewed up their own storm inside Kex Hostel. Last month, on their first tour of the West Coast, heavy winds followed…
If the recent rainy weather is getting you down, take a musical vacation with Beach Day. Formed in 2011 in an uncannily-named place called Hollywood, Florida, it would be impossible for the bright sunshine of their locale not to radiate into their retro-tinged songs. A shared love of surf-rock brou…
By taking their name from the annual festival held in Pamplona, Spain, San Fermin presents their musical philosophy outright. Like the running of the bulls, San Fermin's music bewilders, delights, and intimidates. Surprisingly, the Brookyln-based Baroque-poppers have only released one album, San Fe…
Seattle's Chastity Belt play energetic indie rock 'n roll. They are sarcastic, sharp and both complex and simple all at once. They are also an all-female band. But does gender matter when it comes to the music they produce? Does it matter for the bands Childbirth, Lemolo or La Luz? You get the sens…
The first month of 2014 is closing out with another strong batch of releases, including the third album from L.A. band Dum Dum Girls, which KEXP Music Director Don Yates calls, "a darker, more ‘80s-influenced take on the band’s psych-tinged pop-rock, featuring a more spacious, atmospheric sound pro…
When you hear a band is from Nashville, most likely you think of big coiffed hair, thick acoustic guitar sounds and gallon-sized hats. Well, Wild Cub, borne out of the Tennessee music hotbed, sounds more like they were from Northern California, or even the Pacific Northwest, than from the same plac…
Brian Foss, host of Sonic Reducer (KEXP's Saturday night punk show), plays some of his current favorites plus a few older cuts. Featuring mostly Pacific Northwest bands. 1. Radioactivity - Battered 2. The Dumps - Turd World 3. Steal Shit Do Drugs - Money Spent 4. Sick Sad World - Alone All The T…
DJ Kevin Cole presents a mix of highlight artists performing during this year's Sasquatch! Music Festival. Soundtrack your road trip out to the Gorge, or, if you're unable to attend in person, enjoy this awesome musical companion for your Memorial Day Weekend. 1. Temples - Shelter Song 2. S…
The 43rd annual Bumbershoot Music Festival will be taking place this upcoming Labor Day weekend from Saturday, August 31st through Monday, September 2nd. This year's edition of KEXP's Music That Matters Bumbershoot Podcast is curated by variety mix DJ Melissa Trejo who brings you a mix o…
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…
This weekend, Friday, August 4th and Saturday, August 5th, the Chautauqua Music Festival takes over the Vashon Eagles on Vashon Island. The festival was founded to benefit elementary and middle school arts programs on Vashon Island. To date, Chautauqua has raised over 14,000 dollars to "help augmen…
As the music world reels from the news of Alan Vega's passing, several fans have shared cover versions of Suicide songs online. Check out Win Butler of Arcade Fire's take on the 1979 single "Dream Baby Dream" below, shared under his DJ Windows 98 name, and MGMT's resurrection of Vega's 1983 track …
Peter Michel seems to be living in the breezy midpoint in between lying in bliss and getting lost in the moment, so it's fitting that the Seattle' musician and his comrades in Hibou opened the Bigfoot stage on a day that fell into that same feeling. Most of Hibou's catalog runs at a midtempo pace a…
We love when one of our favorite bands remixes another favorite band, and that's just what we've got with the track below: hear Wye Oak's take on "Need A Friend," a single from EL VY, the collaboration of Matt Berninger of The National and Brent Knopf of Menomena and Ramona Falls. Find the origina…
Anxiety, nausea, discord - they're not just the frequent subjects of Parquet Courts' songs, but the feelings their fans get while waiting between albums. Usually, the wait's never too long, as the Brooklyn group eases jitters by alternating albums and EP's in quick succession. The extra months it t…
I'm actually feeling like a pretty bad music nerd right now, because somehow I've never heard The Dream Syndicate's debut album, The Days of Wine and Roses, which the Internet seems to agree is one of the most important albums of the 1980s (and when the Internet agrees on something, you really shou…
In honor of Janet Jackson releasing her highly anticipated Unbreakable album today, Tin Angel Records has dropped a tribute album called Dear Janet. The album features a variety of indie artists, who each cover one of 16 Janet classics. For instance, Deradoorian takes on "The Pleasure Principle", …
