Johnny Jewel makes music that calls upon the venue of cinema so regularly, that when he actually creates something meant to go along with film, it almost seems more meta than the imaginary films he's themed in other projects. Likewise, the whole of the Italians Do It Better catalog exists in this s…
The best collaboration projects seem to happen effortlessly. When two masters of their craft come together, both bringing all their respective elements to the table and begin mixing them, oftentimes, they end up with a heterogenous mixture, swinging unevenly between two opposing poles. Some pieces …
It's real. After teasing fans on and off for the better part of 22 or so years, guitarist/vocalist Kevin Shields has delivered the third full-length My Bloody Valentine album, m b v. (Take a deep breath.) Since its release on Saturday night (which resulted in the cancellation of the evening plans o…
XL Records is entering a very fun new chapter - chapter six to be exact. Last fall (and this spring with the physical edition), the label released Chapter VI, the first entry in their ongoing electronic compilation series since Chapter V back in 1995. The label has seen a ridiculous amount of growt…
Dan Deacon has one dynamic range: massive. Loud, soft, euphoric, cacophonous, it doesn't matter - what Dan Deacon does is at full blast, whatever the knob at hand may be. There are intimidating levels of passion and conviction in every second of his recordings, with or without any vocals attached. …
When it comes to long-lived makers of weird music, Einstürzende Neubauten is a fair match for Pere Ubu. Pere Ubu was founded a couple of years earlier, but as far as I can tell Neubauten has never had an officially inactive period. Pere Ubu is arguably the poppier of the two bands (most of their so…
The ascent of electronic producers from the obscure underground scene to the fringes of pop mainstream is a path that is becoming more and more common these days, and few have done it as seamlessly and organically as San Francisco's Barrett Richards, best known to the music world as Kastle. With a …
Seattle duo The Spider Ferns don't make music, they create worlds. Each of their songs is like a new landscape. You may have heard the sounds before -- drums that seem to echo into infinity, bass lines that throb and pulse like they have lives of their own, electronic sounds that shimmer like a cre…
It’s time again for Friday on My Mind. Our weekly blog post where we look at videos centered around one common theme. This is a collaborative effort between KEXP and King 5 News. Anyone who follows football or has been to The Clink for a Hawks game knows that hands down it is the loudest stadium in…
Through 2023, KEXP is celebrating 50 Years of Hip-Hop. Each week, we'll celebrate a different year in hip-hop with a deep dive into a particular song released that year.
Something felt different in the Neumos basement last week as the crowd packed in to see Shy Girls. The Portland electronic act, led by Dan Vidmar, has been around for a couple years, dropping lush EPs including the lauded Timeshare, making earnest love songs for the introspective bedroom-ridden lis…
It's Jehnny Beth's world, we just live in it. Or at least it was for fifty minutes, when Savages commanded the Bigfoot stage and the massive crowd in front of it. A post-punk band with an unapologetically austere aesthetic and ethos, anyone who thought the English quartet wouldn't seem like prime c…
