If the Fremont Abbey and its team are known for anything, it's for finding new visions for how we see intimate shows in Seattle. For a singular example, earlier this year, the Abbey hosted Baltimore dream pop band Beach House for the smallest show the band has put on in Seattle almost a decade. Sho…
Loyal listeners of The Roadhouse on KEXP may have noticed host Greg Vandy was absent a bit last year... well, now you can hold in your hand the reason why: 26 Songs in 30 Days: Woody Guthrie's Columbia River Songs and the Planned Promised Land in the Pacific Northwest, out now via Sasquatch Books. …
Opening this year’s live broadcast from Kex Hostel at Iceland Airwaves Music Festival is Icelandic experimental electro-pop band East of My Youth. Formed just last year, East of My Youth created a lot of buzz with their first single “Lemonstars” at the end of last summer, and have since been on a s…
"You got your peanut butter on my chocolate?" No, we got your chocolate on Thurston Moore! Or maybe it was the other way around! Either way, a simple chocolate bar wrapper was the inspiration for a brand new song, written on the spot, by Thurston and his new project Chelsea Light Moving. No doubt …
We can't say the song title on the air, but we sure can on the KEXP Blog! So, check out the clip for the track "Shithole" from Toronto stand-outs Weaves. Director Trevor Blumas fixes his lens on frontwoman Jasmyn Burke. In a press release, Burke says, "We shot this video on a hot Summers day with …
I've covered a lot of obscure bands in the (gulp) 9 years I've been doing this series, but The Invisible really takes the cake. Interestingly, their album Dystopia seems to be available on all the usual internet music services, but the only smidge of information I can find on them is a discogs list…
Next on the KEXP broadcast live from Kex Hostel at Iceland Airwaves Music Festival is the boss MC of Iceland, Emmsjé Gauti. The stage name for Icelandic rapper Gauta Þeyr Mássonar) Emmsjé Gauti is reigning king of Iceland’s burgeoning hip hop scene. Though he’s only in his mid-twenties, he’s been r…
UK quartet Savages share a new single from their highly-anticipated sophomore release, Adore Life, out January 22nd via Matador. The album was recorded in London with producer Johnny Hostile and engineer Richard Woodcraft, and mixed in Copenhagen with Trentemøller. The video for the track "The Ans…
It was a busy weekend for Jamie xx: not only did he bring the beats to the Capitol Hill Block Party, but he also released a mix for Apple Music's Beats 1 featuring tracks from The War on Drugs, The Persuasians, Deadboy, Apparat, The Durutti Column, The Doors, and more. You can listen to it here. J…
I was so excited about going to see Television next week at the Moore that I had this whole plan to do a post around their two first albums and had it all ready to go before I realized that I'd covered the KCMU DJs' gushing response to their classic debut, Marquee Moon a few years ago. But that's a…
Hey kids, it's time for another installment of Levi Feels Old! What would you say if I told you Primus's debut studio album Frizzle Fry was turning 25 this year? If you're me, you'd say "shit, I feel old." But that's OK, aging is a thing that happens. Some of us age better than others, and some alb…
Enter Sasquatch! 2014 day 3... people enter the festival grounds slightly tired, mostly grimy with camp for 2 nights and no showers, but ready for round 3. Things started a bit mellow Sunday afternoon as clouds parted ways for more beautiful sunshine and only 1 scattered storm that nobody seemed to…
Last night Nirvana was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with enthusiasm and fanfare fit for one of the most influential bands of our time. With the 20th anniversary of frontman Kurt Cobain's death barely behind us, there was the question of who would fill in for him at the induction ce…
Sunday night was a great one for Seattleites pretty much every kind. The Seahawks’ final playoffs game against the Forty-Niners stayed tight throughout, but in the end, the Hawks emerged victorious and everyone in Seattle jumping and shouting in the streets. But perhaps the luckiest of the these ma…
It's been "a long time coming" — The Head and the Heart's own Josiah Johnson said what was on all of their fans' minds. Though only two years have elapsed since local label Sub Pop released their self-titled debut, the Seattle band had been making a name for themselves well before, and given their …
Armand Schaubroeck has quite a back story, and as far as I can tell the best way to get the whole thing would be to listen to his debut album, this self-released triple-LP. (You might imagine he funded such a grandiose release with money stolen during the teenaged crime spree detailed on the album …
Like Macklemore and Ryan Lewis' headlining performance on Friday night, The Lumineers' Monday evening set felt like the culmination of a whirlwind year that started with a little help from Seattle. In January 2012, John Richards began playing "Ho Hey" back-to-back on the Morning Show, the song bega…
I covered a Robyn Hitchcock in this space a while back, but this is the first time we've looked at an album from The Soft Boys, the band that first brought him to the attention of college radio nerds across the globe. The band was rather short-lived, breaking up shortly after the relatively unsucce…
Australian band San Cisco’s first time in Seattle included a stop by KEXP for an in-studio with Cheryl Waters. “That was more fun than a barrel of monkeys,” joked Waters, describing the performance. Formed in 2009 in the small city of Fremantle, Australia (the same town home to Tame Impala), San Ci…
David Bowie played his last concert (to date) on June 25th, 2004 in Scheeßel, Germany. On one of the final legs of his tour behind 2003's Reality, Bowie began dealing with a series of health problems, which caused the dates following the Scheeßel performance to be scrapped. Afterwards, Bowie slowly…
