Sharon Van Etten wrote and recorded a new song inspired by the horrible events of the Pulse Club shooting in Orlando back in June. "Not Myself" is a beautiful and haunting tribute to the victims. Proceeds will go to the gun control nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety. [Pitchfork]In her statement, V…
Set against the illuminated backdrop of the many pallets of Chrome Satan at the Hilliard's Beer Taproom, The Faint, during their performance, looked like dance-punk dictators, rulers of some Mad Max dystopia in which beer's more valuable than gold. In case you missed it, or in case you just wanted …
The boozy blues of obsession and regret never sounded so good... at least not in the last 16 years. It's been that long since The Afghan Whigs released an album and its members turned their attention elsewhere. Yet, while other 90's bands are now cashing in on their notoriety with 20- and 25-year a…
Although it began as an anonymous solo project, Arthur Ashin's Autre Ne Veut has emerged as one of the leaders of the current electronic and indie-tinged R&B explosion. Now that the project has evolved into an entity outside of his bedroom, Ashin's live takes on the songs from Anxiety, his seco…
Julie Byrne makes a face when she doesn't have to sing, one that expresses a sheer contentment with what's going on around her. She leaned back and made this face - which is featured on the cover her sublime sophomore outing, Not Even Happiness - at least six times during her Sunday afternoon set o…
Sometimes a record excites you so much that you lose your critical and verbal faculties, and all you can do is jump up and down and shout "Woooooo-hooooo!" - or perhaps control your muscles just enough to write "Wooooooo-hooooo!" on a little sticker and slap it on said record. Executive Slacks' Nau…
With their shifting, phased-out sound, local urban poets and Cloud Nice members Kingdom Crumbs have become of the 206's leading hip hop groups. (In a recent Stranger piece, our own Larry Mizell, Jr. called the group "hands-down full-stop one of the very very best groups our town has.") The Seattle …
When last we checked in with the music of Edward Ka-Spel - probably best known for his work with the Legendary Pink Dots - word was he might be touring with said Dots imminently. Well, the tour has come and gone, and it included a stop at our own Chop Suey. Ed helpfully kept a tour diary, with thi…
Thao Nguyen is a voice of the people. While her music leans a bit more toward peppy indie pop than hippy folk rock, Thao's songs on her fourth LP, We The Common, are about the individual experiences and personal interactions we all have. As she says about the new Thao & The Get Down Stay Down a…
As audiences are prone to reflect the shows they are attending, the Decibel Festival crowd at Demdike Stare and Andy Stott was filled with the more experimental seeking fans, those in all black or all white, eyes wide, hair cut expressively in abstract shapes. Demdike Stare, a.k.a. Miles Whittaker,…
With a name like Chastity Belt, there has to be an amount of self-awareness with your music, and the Seattle quartet definitely have it. However, that doesn't mean self-seriousness, which is what Gretchen Grimm, Lydia Lund, Julia Shapiro, and Annie Truscott definitely don't have. Some of the Sasqua…
Besides deliberate misspellings and prodigious capitalization in band names, we hope that one of the trends people will note about the music of 2013 is the ascendency of female voiced indie pop. CHVRCHES, HAERTS, HAIM (okay, a few bands fall into both categories!) as well as London Grammar, Lorde, …
KEXP's Resident Runner and host of the Morning Show, John Richards, presents Volume 2 of our new Runner Powered Podcast series. Hit your second wind with two hours (31 tracks!) of high energy KEXP favorites. 1. Animal Collective - What Would I Want? Sky 2. Small Black (Feat. Aaron Rockers) - Free…
New York indie rock gods Yeah Yeah Yeahs make their long awaited return this year with a bludgeoning of contradictions. The trio - made up of singer Karen O, guitarist Nick Zinner, and drummer Brian Chase - has made the books in recent history with indie rock anthems like "Zero", "Phenomena", and "…
Disclosure is not a new face to Sasquatch! Music Festival, having played the El Chupacabra stage in 2013. Since then they’ve garnered worldwide fame and accolades and influenced the sound of pop music as a whole. So when their 2015 release Caracal was not received with as much universal praise as t…
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. The weather here in Seattle is out of control super summer awesome. And what makes a sunny summer day even better? Brand…
On May 11-13, Upstream Music Fest + Summit will descend upon Pioneer Square with over 300 local and national acts. Back in February, the first wave of artists whet our appetites with names like Flying Lotus, AlunaGeorge, Shabazz Palaces, Beat Connection and Snarky Puppy. Now it's finally here — the…
If you call yourself an Arcade Fire fan and have seen the band at least once in the live setting, there's a good chance that you need absolutely no introduction to Will Butler. When Arcade Fire skyrocketed to the moon amongst the Reflektor hype of 2013, it was clear that the one facet of their musi…
When Passion Pit broke through at the end of the '00s, they were a band bristling with potential, but still discovering how to follow through as a live band. Although frontman Michael Angelakos' health struggles gave the touring cycle behind their sophomore effort Gossamer a rough start, by the end…
