It seems the thing people at KCMU most wanted to talk about regarding this 12" single by the Northern Irish band (with an American singer) That Petrol Emotion was the graphic statement on the back of the record regarding the strip searching of female prisoners at Armagh Prison in Northern Ireland. …
Seattle's Jason Baxter & Kyle Hargus craft colorful electronic music under the moniker USF, rising up with the pioneering chillwave album Ocean Sunbirds in 2009 as Universal Studios Florida. They've been unleashing more club-inspired jams on a string of EPs under the shortened alias, most recen…
Next on the KEXP live video stream from KEX Hostel at Iceland Airwaves Music Festival was brand-new band Andy Svarthol. Comprised of brothers Egill and Bjarki Hreinn Viðarsson). Andy Svarthol came together in 2015 after Egill’s other project Nóra went on hiatus. They aren’t even in the festival’s o…
Local electronic duo ODESZA had a meteoric rise in 2014 with their sophomore album In Return and it shows with their new large-scale cinematic video for "Line of Sight" off of their upcoming third album A Moment Apart. Directed by Daniel Brown, the video tells the story of a young boy wandering a …
The final day of Upstream Music Fest & Summit finished off with a set from local favorites NAVVI, who continued their run of excellent live performances with a compelling, atmospheric set. Headlining the Hush Hush Records showcase at the Weyerhaeuser Woodshed stage, NAVVI provided an ideal soun…
Tonight, Pearl Jam are being inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame in a ceremony at Barclays Center in New York, and we couldn't be prouder. (Other inductees include Joan Baez, Electric Light Orchestra, Journey, Tupac Shakur, and Yes.) HBO will air the event later this month on April 29th, bu…
The alias of Portland-based musician Douglas Appling, Emancipator has become well-known for his blissful, lush, and cinematic style of music that organically fuses downtempo, trip-hop, and instrumental hip-hop elements into his own enveloping style. A stellar live performer that's a staple on the f…
The 2016 Summer Olympics kick off this Friday in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. More than 200 nations will compete 28 different categories: synchronized swimming, table tennis, canoe slalom, and many others (that seem less fun to me). Rio de Janeiro beat out Madrid, Chicago, and Tokyo to host, and in hono…
As far as I'm concerned, it's the most important music news of the day: Iggy Pop has started an Instagram account for his pet cockatoo, Biggy Pop! Watch Biggy give Iggy a "Flintstone shave," watch them chillin' on the couch listening to Iggy's 1993 single "Wild America," and (below) watch them dan…
Anxiety, nausea, discord - they're not just the frequent subjects of Parquet Courts' songs, but the feelings their fans get while waiting between albums. Usually, the wait's never too long, as the Brooklyn group eases jitters by alternating albums and EP's in quick succession. The extra months it t…
This is one of those records where reading the DJ reviews from 1987 really makes me want to hear the album (without having to do anything so crazy as, say, buy it on iTunes or Amazon, cheapskate and preferrer-of-physical-media that I am). A lot of tantalizing phrases and references get thrown aroun…
Our fourth day of live Iceland Airwaves music from Kex Hostel in the volcanic wonderland of Iceland kicked off early and with a high energy middle finger. Oh, are you hung over from Reykjavik's infamously late nightlife? Pink Street Boys don't care. These boys claim to be the loudest band in Icelan…
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. I doesn't feel more like summer to me than when the Concerts at the Mural begin. We present these free shows along with …
Happy Earth Day, everybody. Today we celebrate the birth of our planet... oh, wait, no, today we pay attention to the giant sphere hurtling through space that we all live on, and hopefully take a few moments to reflect on the valuable gifts it gives us and our own impact upon it. Earth Day itself s…
New Zealand band Ghost Wave blew us away with their hypnotic set of moody psych-rock songs at our CMJ broadcast last year, so we're especially thrilled to debut the band's music video for the track "Orb." The closing track off their debut Flying Nun Records release, Ages, "Orb" finds the group of A…
Pixies have shared a new video for the atmospheric track "Magdalena" off their latest EP-2 (read an in-depth review of the EP on the KEXP Blog here). Check it out below, and don't forget to tune in to KEXP on Tuesday, February 18th for a LIVE session from this legendary band, including the debut o…
Throughout Okkervil River's in-studio session, frontman Will Sheff keeps breaking into giggles. And if you look closely around the room, you'll see plastic action figures perched on the keyboard or suspended from the mic stand. It's that sense of childlike wonder that Sheff taps into for the band's…
The Sumner Brothers, the Vancouver B.C.-based alt-country band, co-led by brother Bob and Brian Sumner, stopped by KEXP to play a moving set on The Roadhouse with Greg Vandy. Looming with almost nightmarish instrumentation, but calming, yearning vocals, the band finds the listener’s ear immediately…
In addition to producing about three months of shows and two new songs, The Postal Service reunion can now add a video to the list of things its produced. The AB/CD/CD-directed clip for the new song "A Tattered Line of String" finds a man fighting off a laundry machine that's trying to suck him in.…
Toro y Moi kicked off his world tour with a performance at Sasquatch to the increasingly tired but never lacking in excitement crowd (see exhausted dancing). His set was between the PNW's Odesza in the morning and Disclosure's in the afternoon - a line-up of three amazing and impossible to not danc…
