This week in El Sonido we're going to focus on Colombia. I just visited the country for my second time, spending a week in Bogotá to attend a great music conference Resonancia Colombia, which is part of a bigger technology event Colombia 3.0. I spoke on a handful of music business panels, met a bun…
Swedish artist Lykke Li shares a video as dark and lonely as the track itself: watch the clip for "Never Gonna Love Again" below, from last year's I Never Learn. In an interview with Rolling Stone, she explains, "Loneliness and heartbreak follow you everywhere and they are loudest right after the …
Last month, we shared Moby's version of "Rio," and today, we've got Warpaint's stark, moody cover of Duran Duran's "The Chauffeur." These covers will be available on the tribute album Making Patterns Rhyme: A Tribute to Duran Duran, out July 15th on Manimal Vinyl. All sales go to benefit Amnesty I…
Saturday has turned out to be a spectacularly sunny day at the Gorge - not a rain cloud all day long! The line up Saturday of Sasquatch was absolutely stacked (as are the other 2 days, of course). But Saturday was chalk full of bands that lots of different people were excited about, bands from Seat…
After 14 years together, San Fransisco band Thee Oh Sees have announced an "indefinite hiatus." They've been consistently turning out loads of fresh material over the last five years, but things recently got hectic when frontman John Dwyer decided to move from San Fan to Los Angeles. Their manager…
Hey, guess who I'm going to see next week in Seattle? Just guess! You'll never - oh, wait, you totally guessed My Bloody Valentine, didn't you? Dang it. Well, it's true. Some might say I'm at least 20 years too late to be seeing this influential, semi-reclusive band for the very first time, but rep…
Because being the frontman for Radiohead and Atoms for Peace still leaves a little bit of free time in his schedule, Thom Yorke has been working on some soundtracks across the past year. However, unlike his film-scoring bandmate Jonny Greenwood, Thom has been making soundtracks for fashion montages…
Factory Belt: A Night of Uncle Tupelo is a benefit show happening this Thursday, January 17th, at the Tractor Tavern in Ballard. Get your tickets here. The event is going to feature a whole slew of Seattle bands playing Uncle Tupelo songs and will be hosted by KEXP's own Don Slack of Swingin' Doo…
Duluth-based band Low, whose members are going into their 20th year as a band together, have released "Just Make It Stop" from the Jeff Tweedy-produced The Invisible Way out on Sub Pop on March 18th. The album will be their 10th, and the slowcore pioneers have upped the tempo on this track -- it's…
"I heard today was the first nice day in quite a while, right?" As his band Cayucas starts in on another track of bright, warm, surf pop gold, he banters with a Seattle winter crowd who got to go out in the sun in early March - a near miraculous event by any account. "Coincidence? I don't think so,…
I was flipping through the R section in KEXP's vinyl library the other day when I stumbled across several records by the Red Hot Chili Peppers (which is exactly what should happen when you're flipping through the R section in any radio station worth its salt). It occurred to me at the moment - as h…
"Cheers to evolution, cheers to knowing where you are going, cheers to the future.” Those were Trevor Power's parting words as Boise and the U.S. said goodbye to Youth Lagoon on the final night of Treefort Music Fest. It was a moment Boise was surely dreading, but after a fun day with acts such as …
In the liner notes of her latest album, Ivy Tripp, Katie Crutchfield — better known by her recording alias Waxahatchee — has a photo of none other than Dolly Parton. She laughed when KEXP DJ Stevie Zoom asked her about it. "I have Dolly everywhere I go," she smiled. Like Parton, the Alabama-born Cr…
The duo behind The Grizzled Mighty play hard, up-tempo rock. Their big, beefy chords and frenetic drumming inspire the blood cells running in your veins to speed up and push you to new heights. Don't believe us? You can check out the band's new album here and go see them live at Neumos today (Satur…
It's been four years since Owen Pallett stopped by KEXP for a live in-studio, four long years. Although he's grown a beard, Pallett's new music could be described as clean-shaven, bare in its autobiographical revelations. His latest material even includes his phone number! In between performances o…
Did you come to Iceland Airwaves to lose your mind? FM Belfast and their fans certainly did. Our fourth show of the day at Kex Hostel was Iceland's highest energy party act, as we once again featured the typically headlining band in this very intimate space during our broadcast. This electro pop ou…
It's only fitting that he's on a record label called Truth & Soul Records, because that's exactly the kind of music the legendary Lee Fields creates. The 63-year-old music veteran is still going strong after 43 years in the business, and his most recent release, Emma Jean, is just as vital as e…
Did somebody say Jack Endino? Here's one of those Endino-produced classics I was talking about last week. If Mudhoney needed no introduction by the time they released their self-titled debut LP in 1989, at this point they should be, I don't know, playing on top of the Space Needle or something? Oh,…
Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova is on a hunger strike, protesting an atmosphere of “slave labor” in her Russian prison. Today, she writes in a letter proliferated by her husband, “I am going on hunger strike and refusing to participate in colony slave labor. I will do this until the administrat…
You won't find many wallflowers growing among the hills and dales of Scotland. Even in their quieter moments, Scots tend to go big. Witness Glasgow band Frightened Rabbit, who on their latest album, Pedestrian Verse, play "folk rock" at its most anthemic. The impassioned lads are no strangers to KE…
