Local duo Chimurenga Renaissance (aka Tendai Maraire of Shabazz Palaces and Hussein Kalonji) debut a new track today titled "Girls With Gunz," a song they say was inspired by African assassin Grace Maseva, a woman who fought in the Second Chimurenga, the war that ended white rule in Zimbabwe. Loca…
In case you missed its debut on The Morning Show on KEXP yesterday, Nada Surf are back with new music: stream the single "Believe You’re Mine" below. The Brooklyn band's eighth studio album, You Know Who You Are, will be out March 4th via beloved local label Barsuk, and features two tracks co-writ…
We continue our weekly series of recordings KEXP captured during the OFF Festival in Katowice, Poland. Thanks to festival and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute's Don’t Panic! We’re from Poland! initiative, who made our trip possible, we're thrilled to share with KEXP listeners new bands that we've disc…
West coast weirdo Ariel Pink shares a video today for the track "Jell-O" off last year's stellar full-length Pom Pom. The psychedelic clip, directed by Dan Kapelovitz, showcases vintage meat industry footage interspersed with the band making Jell-O shots. The video is dedicated to the late Kim Fow…
December kicks off with another slew of great reissues, including a deluxe version of Yo La Tengo's 1994 release Painful. As frontman Ira Kaplan delightfully quips, "Anyone who ever said they liked our older records more than Painful, I just told them they’re wrong." The deluxe version, titled Extr…
Lena Simon is a wizard. She plays bass, guitar, drums, keys and sings. She's been on Leno with Mary Lambert, has toured Europe with La Luz (who, incidentally, just announced a tour with Ty Segal) and writes songs for her band Kairos. She's also a generous soul with a great deal of compassion and in…
Yesterday, Grimes unearthed a previously unreleased track that she recorded in 2009 with Devon Welsh of Majical Cloudz. At the time, the pair were on bad terms with their obese cat, Voignamir, who weighed somewhere between 20-30 pounds. His dieting angst inspired this song, which you can stream on…
The expectations are always a little different when you go see a musician who is potentially past his/her prime. John Cale has been playing for over thirty years, and as a seminal member of the Velvet Underground and a striking solo artist since the 70s, there is an incredible amount of material h…
Barboza, the intimate venue underneath Neumos, feels cut off from the rest of the world, with no sight or sound of the rest of the world. In some ways, it's the perfect venue for a band like Hælos, whose particular brand of UK club R&B feels wholly detached from the rest of the world, cinematic…
Nada Surf have made a career out of finding their place in the world. When they were just kids, they wrote the teenage guide to popularity, navigating a close proximity between love and lust and insecurity. When they grew up and into real relationship, they found the inside of love, discovering tha…
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…
We may never know what 1984 KCMU DJs thought of Joe Jackson's Body and Soul, the follow up to Night and Day (on which we have plenty of input from the contemporaneous DJs). It's pretty likely that many of those who loved his early stuff remained less than pleased with his doubling-down on the highl…
Pulling this album from my digital pile of photos brought up an interesting (to me, anyway) bit of synchronicity. The last time I posted about the Smiths, I wasn't yet a father - being an adoptive dad, I didn't even know that I would have a son in a matter of weeks. Now I have a boy who will turn …
Going into Jagwar Ma’s Saturday night set at the Yeti Stage at Sasquatch, fans had plenty of reasons to be excited about the Australian trio’s hour-long set. The group has opened for Tame Impala and the xx, two other bands who have made being an introvert sound very cool again, and they've released…
Last year, legendary singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen passed away at the age of 82. Today, his son Adam shares a posthumous video for the track "Traveling Light" using previously unseen footage of his father. The video was co-directed with Sammy Slabbinck, who also worked on Cohen's final album You…
Congratulations to Mavis Staples, who just won a Grammy last night for Best American Roots Performance. It's great timing as the legendary blues singer will release Livin' On A High Note, on Friday. This, her fourteenth studio album, features songs written by Justin Vernon, M. Ward, Benjamin Booker…
The owls may not be what they seem, but neither does David Lynch. As a director, writer, musician, actor, artist, even furniture designer, he truly does it all. It's no surprise that his surrealistic influence extends to the music world, so on today, his 69th birthday, KEXP pays tribute to Lynch wi…
There is something both completely Polish and non-Polish about Lautari, the band featured this week in our series of Polish bands KEXP recorded while at the OFF Festival in Katowice. The award-winning ethno-jazz quartet, whose members hail from central and southern Poland, draw their name from the …
"Your hippocampus does it alright" That astute observation from Built to Spill's Doug Martsch on his cerebral ode to memory function is a heck of an understatement when it comes to Twin Cities band Hippo Campus. The young four-piece is quickly becoming the pride of the St. Paul scene with their bre…
