Labor Day weekend is upon us, which in Seattle means Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival! This long-running festival enters its 45th year of music, comedy, literary events, and more at Seattle Center. As we prepare to move into that location ourselves, this year KEXP won't be broadcasting from th…
Joe Jackson has never been an easy artist to pin down. His first album's lean, edgy, punk-leaning pop sound has aged incredibly well and influenced a thousand bands (without Look Sharp!, I maintain, there is no Spoon), but over the 35-plus years since then he has constantly played with different fo…
From heartfelt harmonies to tranquil flirtations, Seattle’s Smokey Brights drop by the KEXP live room to unveil a decadent collection of tracks from their new rhythmically red rummed release, Taste for Blood. Duo vocalists Ryan Devlin and Kim West produce hypnotic results - tender chants that sound…
During Decibel Festival, Optical 3: Playful Dischord took place at the Sky Church, this time featuring Berlin's Kangding Ray, Atom™ HD/AV and ending with Oneohetrix Point Never with visual artist Nate Boyce. This stacked line-up explored everything from dance to deep space. Kangding Ray, a former a…
The light rain didn't keep the crowds away from attending the first day of the 2014 Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival, and the improving weather will only make today more enjoyable. No doubt people will come rain or shine for legendary bands like Big Star's Third and The Replacements, but you m…
Get drunk in tribute to those who aren't old enough to do so! This week, our friends at the Vera Project kick off the 12th Annual A Drink for the Kids, a lost-weekend-long fundraiser for 21+ music lovers to support the beloved all-ages venue, just by drinking at their favorite bar.The opening night…
Ever since Warpaint first made their mark around 2008, the words "hypnotic", "atmospheric" and "brooding" have been applied by critics and fans in the most appealing ways. Their recent self-titled, sophomore full-length finds the LA band no less ethereal yet stretching further out with their minima…
Michael Benjamin Learner is the singer, songwriter and recording artist extraordinaire for the band Telekinesis - he writes all the parts, plays all the instruments and treats the project with a fatherly-like care. Learner, as Telekinesis, also has the pleasure of playing this year's inaugural Timb…
Sadly, it sounds like supergroup Wild Flag is now at half-mast. Drummer Janet Weiss tells UK publication The Skinny that the band is pretty much done: “It was great, but I think it just kinda ran its course. It’s hard to have a band when you live five hours apart by plane.” Weiss is currently on t…
By and large, the lineup for Mountain Oasis Electronic Music Summit is composed of electronically-based musicians. But like its namesake, it also swings a little left of center, and on Friday, it was the artists who weren't tied down to their computers, synthesizers, or sequencers that made the str…
Directed by bandleader Danny Mekonnen, the Boston-based Debo Band take inspirations from 1960s Ethiopian jazz music, elements of klezmer, funk and rock and roll. They combine these into original instrumentation and create a rhythmic, thoughtful, often trans-like musical narrative. Adding to Mekonne…
Long standing but ever moving Gypsy punks Gogol Bordello are almost constantly on the road. Like wandering Gypsies of yore, the band travels from city to city, festival to festival, throughout the world, on a mission to provoke audiences to dance -- and open their minds -- through infectious and of…
More than any other day, Saturday at Bonnaroo was filled with things that could only really happen at the Farm, among them, Björk's jellyfish facemask thing, R. Kelly entering on a boom crane, a 5k at 9 in the morning (in 80 degree heat), and a moment where Jim James, R. Kelly, Billy Idol, and John…
After Red Fang had totally shredded the Bigfoot Stage, punk rock Vancouver-based duo Japandroids jumped on stage and after fairly minimal sound checking, started their sweaty and awesome set. Though the sound was a bit strange (it would later cut out during a Vampire Weekend song), their energy was…
From pop to funk and R&B, Prince is a musician of many genres. I have to say, this raw and amped up version of his hit "Let's Go Crazy" fits him like a glove. He has four shows planned in two nights (April 18 and 19) at Shoebox and if this six minutes of instrumental perfection is any indicatio…
It seems like forever ago that Toro Y Moi were lumped in with the chillwave movement, but across the last four years and three albums, Chaz Bundick’s music and (and it’s four person live incarnation) have gradually evolved into something bigger than a blogosphere-darling bedroom project: a fully-fl…
With their ridiculous number of side projects and other interests, it's amazing that songwriters and multi-instrumentalists Rob Crow and Armistead Burwell Smith IV continue to make killer albums together as Pinback. As ever, on Information Retrieved, their fifth LP, the San Diego duo expertly craft…
At the Highway 99 Blues Club on February 17 legends of the Northwest garage rock like Merrilee Rush, Buck Ormsby (The Wailers), Mark Whitman, The Daily Flash and many more will come together to play a special benefit show for her aim is true -- the film documenting the life and work of pioneering r…
Today's Song of the Day, as chosen by Cheryl Waters, host of the Midday Show on KEXP, is "I Just Like To Watch" by Ghoul Talk, from the 2024 album I Want to Consume on Death Certificate Records.
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