It's a chilly morning in Reykjavik, and KEXP is setting up for another great day of live music at KEX Hostel. While today's performances won't be broadcast on air, there will be live video streaming all day on Facebook. First up are English dream-pop duo Let's Eat Grandma, Icelandic post-punk band …
Super-duo EL VY (that's Matt Berninger of The National and Brent Knopf of Ramona Falls/Menomena) made their television debut last night on Conan. Watch those two (backed by Wye Oak’s Andy Stack on drums) perform the title track from their forthcoming full-length album, Return to the Moon, out Octo…
Longtime KEXP faves Low return with their 11th album, Ones and Sixes, on September 11th via Sub Pop. The latest from the pride of Duluth, MN was co-produced by the band themselves along with engineer BJ Burton at Justin Vernon’s April Base Studios in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Stream the full-length b…
Since her 2010 album Have One On Me, we haven't heard all that much from Joanna Newsom, except the fact that she is now engaged to her SNL boyfriend Andy Samberg. So it is welcome news to hear she's made a new video for her cover of Sandy Denny's "The North Star Grassman and the Ravens". The vide…
Nu-disco god Andy Butler and his Hercules and Love Affair project have been blowing our minds for years now. With the self-titled, Butler cultivated a disco masterpiece, full of slow burn and tainted love that needed to be danced to. Then, with last year's excellent Blue Songs, he moved in a slight…
Senior Video Producer Jim Beckmann joins DJ Kevin Cole to preview some of the great Icelandic bands playing Iceland Airwaves 2016, featuring psych rock, hip hop, indie pop and more, from bands like Sin Fang, Singapore Sling, WESEN, SUÐ and JFDR. 1. Ljóðfæri - Intro 2. Andy Svarthol - Ofbirta 3. Si…
Singer/songwriter Andy Shauf is a master storyteller who adeptly weaves complex stories and tenderly realistic emotions with softly strummed folk rock.
Today, legendary singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen celebrates his 82nd birthday, and we're the ones who get a present. Check out the title track from his upcoming release, You Want It Darker, out October 21st via Sony. A press release explains, "Cohen created this hypnotic groove with the addition o…
The roots of Owl John lie in the idea that to save something, sometimes you need to walk away from it. That's what caused Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchinson to take a break from the Scottish indie rock group and return to writing songs the way he did when he started the band a decade earli…
While we consider all our Bumbershoot Music Lounge sessions "special," there's something undeniably extra-special about this one. When main songwriter Alex Chilton passed away in 2010, followed shortly by the passing of founding bassist Andy Hummel the same year, most assumed we'd never hear from t…
It took losing her voice for Wye Oak to rediscover theirs. On the heels of their successful previous album, Civilian, the Baltimore duo were playing arenas, opening for acts like The National and The Decemberists. And then, sadly, frontwoman Jenn Wasner developed vocal-cord nodules, and under docto…
It's been pretty cold in Seattle lately, but that shouldn't stop you from going out and catching some great live shows. Starting on Monday night, Bandoliers, The Van Allen Belt, and Fey Moth are at Chop Suey. On Wednesday, Los Lobos are at Benaroya Hall. Thursday night, Yo La Tengo play one of the …
What happens when you strip away the feedback and distortion that defines a genre like shoegaze? Without all the fuzz, what of value remains? In the case of British band Ride, apparently quite a lot. Somewhat like shaving a cat only to find a bigger one underneath, we discovered during an acoustic …
Sound & Vision talks with author and activist Catherine Mayer, widow of Gang of Four guitarist, Andy Gill, who died February 1, 2020.
We could think of no better band to close out the live room at KEXP's Dexter and Denny studio than legendary shoegazers Ride. In celebration of the 25th anniversary of their landmark debut Nowhere, the UK quartet reunited for a worldwide tour. We captured a stunning acoustic session from founding f…
The music of Duluth, MN-based trio Low has always evoked great emotion, so it's no surprise their videos do, too (except for that one with John Stamos; we don't talk about that). For the track "Lies," off their latest Sub Pop full-length Ones And Sixes, the band turned to Spanish film director Man…
Anyone who's seen the video where a meteor falls during a Modest Mouse show while they're playing "Dark Center of the Universe" knows that it was a perfect synchronization of life and music, coincidental or not. And while there's no footage of it – yet – let it be known that case/lang/veirs summone…
The innovative releases continue for Lena Simon’s band, KAIROS. Who doesn’t like it when one masterful band takes the work of another for the sake of reinterpretation and homage? And today, we have two examples of this collaboration: a Cock & Swan remix of the KAIROS track, “Can / Cannot” and a…
Only last year, legendary shoegaze band Ride released their first album in 21 years, Weather Diaries. Thankfully, we won't have to wait another 21 years for their next release. Today the band has announced a new EP entitled Tomorrow's Shore that will be dropping next month. It'll include the single…
