Bassist Kim Deal has left the Pixies, the band announced today on their Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/pixiesofficial?rf=106226122747445) page. “We are very proud to have worked with her on and off over the last 25 years,” the statement read. “Despite her decision to move on, we will always con…
2013 is going to be a great year for Seattle music, with so many new bands on the verge of blowing up. Seattle trio Dude York stands out among them with a promising 5-song EP released last June. Though band founders Peter Richards and Andrew Hall are such fans of their male moniker as to label thei…
There's history to bands covering Pavement's "Box Elder." When The Wedding Present recorded their interpretation of the track from Pavement's Slay Tracks (1933–1969) EP track back in '89, it caught the ear of renowned BBC DJ John Peel and helped generate buzz for the release abroad. Nearly three de…
Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unrealeased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJ’s think you should hear. Today’s song, featured on the …
Friends of the station Of Monsters And Men have come a long way since KEXP filmed them playing in a living room in Reykjavik, Iceland in 2010. In fact, they've come a long way even since the station filmed them playing on a bluff at Sasquatch in 2012. KEXP was one of the earliest to discover this b…
London post-punk band White Lies have never done anything small. Upon transitioning from their old band Fear of Flying to new, more epic material in 2007, this UK three piece has only pushed for bigger and better as time has gone on. Their 2009 debut To Lose My Life… showcased their unique take on …
Next month we celebrate the 20th birthday of High/Low, the timeless full-length debut from New York indie rock stalwarts Nada Surf. The band celebrated the milestone in great fashion, reissuing the record on beautiful orange vinyl through Vinyl Me Please and giving it a fantastic packaging makeover…
Every once in a while, I post an album from a band that's been so minimally documented on the Internet that I feel I'm adding significantly to the body of public knowledge about them with one little blog post. This is dangerous because usually I know next to nothing about these bands. Take Ism, for…
It’s a rare opportunity to see a band as hyped as Whitney at a venue as intimate as the Sunset Tavern. Or as frontman Julien Ehrlich noted with an off-the-cuff affect he deploys for most his on stage thoughts, “This show’s been sold out a long time.” No surprise there. With the June release of thei…
While gale winds canceled some early main stage shows, a different force of nature was met with far warmer reception on the Bigfoot stage. Yo La Tengo is certainly a force of nature in the indie music scene and a walk back through their discography is a long one, as the group have consistently rele…
As Cheryl Waters jokes, it's taken over ten years to get Trevor Powers' band Youth Lagoon in the KEXP studio. Really, the band has only been around since 2010 - it just feels like we've all been waiting that long. We were all happy finally to have wrangled Youth Lagoon come grace us, and the timing…
It's an impressive week for new releases! Beloved Northwest band Sleater-Kinney end their hiatus with the release of No Cities To Love. KEXP Music Director Don Yates notes, "The recently reunited trio’s eighth album (and first in 10 years) is a strong return-to-form, with an intense blend of punk, …
Talk about a storied past. The Jayhawks rose from the fertile era of Twin Cities rock that also produced such contemporaries as The Replacements, Hüsker Dü, Soul Asylum and Prince. Though they often get tagged as "country rock revivalists" or "alt-country icons", the band's sound and personnel shif…
Decked out in polychromatic tees, unabashedly hip San Francisco band Painted Palms lit up KEXP with a vibrant live set back in July. The band, brainchild of Louisiana-born cousins Christopher Prudhomme and Reese Donohue, released their new album, Forever, on Polyvinyl Records earlier this year. The…
Crystal Antlers is hard to pin down. With each release, the energetic band leaves genre behind, making fans uncertain of their future endeavors, yet they manage to avoid slipping into frustrating unpredictability. Recently, Crystal Antlers wrapped up their North American tour with a stop in Seattle…
Sometimes it’s the simplest words that stop you cold. Soft-spoken Tuareg artist Omara ‘Bombino’ Moctar proved this to me on a stiflingly hot summer evening at the 2012 Pickathon Festival backstage. I was talking to him for their post-performance video interviews, aided by French-Canadian guitarist…
On the show this time, it’s the multi-genre dance music of London’s Ibibio Sound Machine. Ibibio Sound Machine is one of our favorite bands. We met them when they first played on our live broadcast for International Clash Day from London
Emily Fox speaks with The Gits guitarist Andy Kessler and bassist Matt Dresdner about the band’s legacy and the life of Mia Zapata.
Brian Foss, one of the hosts of KEXP’s punk show Sonic Reducer, talks about the British punk band that just won’t quit: Mekons.
