Influenced by the year he spent on the road while writing the record, Simon Green's latest record, Migration, is Bonobo's most progressive album to date, with a wider spectrum of sounds bursting into his electronic compositions. Joined by a full band in his return to KEXP's Live Ro…
Benjamin Booker's second album, Witness, finds the musician rallying his blues rock sound to call for respect and justice in troubling times while retaining the sharp musicianship that made his debut stand out. On his return to the KEXP Live Room, Booker joins Troy Nelson for four Witness son…
Twenty two years after its release, Jeremy Enigk's Return of the Frog Queen continues to enrapture with its baroque arrangements and Enigk's inimitable songwriting. Performing four cuts from the album alongside a new song on KEXP's broadcast from the Upstream Music Festival with a …
The Tunisian singer Emel Mathlouthi breaks cultural and musical boundaries on her own terms, bringing in traditional Tunisian sounds with modern production and protest themes on her latest album, Ensen (English: Human.) Joining Darek Mazzone on Wo' Pop, Mathlouthi performs four songs from En…
The first thing that jumps out listening to Seattle's Maiah Manser is her loping, almost acrobatic vocals. But as the session goes on, it's just as impressive to see how her electronic compositions work themselves around her evocative voice to create swirling, hypnotic sounds. Joining D…
Greta Morgan went into an “intense headspace” for her latest album as Springtime Carnivore, and the result was Midnight Room, her most finessed and melodic set of songs to date. Morgan returns to the KEXP studios for a semi-acoustic session featuring four Midnight Room tracks and a conversation wi…
Hamilton Leithauser is a veteran of the KEXP studios by this point in his career, but his rough and tumble brand of doo wop-damaged rock has never sounded as rich as it has on his 2016 collaborative album with Rostam, I Had a Dream That You Were Mine. The New York City songwriter is in fine form a…
This week’s episode of The Weekly Mix, hosted by John Richards, features a number of songs written in response to the COVID-19 virus, shining a light on artists helping others. This includes new tracks from Ben Gibbard, Shane Tutmarc, Shinyribs, and Empty Country.
As the sun set behind the main stage at Sasquatch Festival, global gypsy dub punk rockers Gogol Bordello played an uptempo set that kept crowd energy high. Formed in New York in 1999, this group has always drawn upon a wide palate of sonic influences. The eight-piece band's unique instrumentation i…
It's a big week for new releases, so let's get right into it. First thing on your shopping list: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' latest, Push The Sky Away. Fifteen albums in and Cave & Co. still create unique stunners. As our Music Director, Don Yates, says, it's "a masterful set of brooding, mi…
The nation is catching on to the wealth of amazing music coming out of Seattle's experimental hip-hop scene. This year listeners have become entranced by Seattle's THEESatisfaction, and before that Shabazz Palaces -- expect the same kind of attention soon for OCnotes (Otis Calvin, III) and his gen…
In this episode, Isabel Khalili talks with Kevin Sur, co-host of KEXP's global Indigenous music show, Sounds of Survivance.
"Don't tell any other festivals, but this miiiiiight be my favorite festival." That's how Merrill Garbus began her campaign to win over the Gorge on Sunday afternoon at Sasquatch, and it certainly worked. tUnE-yArDs' live show has always demanded a participatory audience, if only to dance to Garbus…
We wrapped up day two of the OFF Festival in Katowice, Poland in the wee hours of the morning, tired but very happy and with the desire to reflect on the many positive aspects of the festival. We have been so impressed with OFF Festival, not just because of the high caliber of the lineup but also i…
Due to the windy weather and the consequential shuffling of band’s set times and locations, Sasquatch! Music Festival's El Chupacabra tent housed several acts that certainly didn’t fit the sound the EDM-themed stage is known for. Ibeyi was seemingly one of those bands, but the group had been schedu…
Seattle natives Iska Dhaaf now live in New York, but they still introduce themselves as a band from Seattle. This theme of sticking to your origins was found throughout their set at Sasquatch! Music Festival Monday afternoon. The group now takes the stage as a four-piece, a fitting change as their …
Before he played drums in Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, before he composed the theme song for the US version of Queer As Folk, before he engineered the Sadies’ excellent Internal Sounds, Toronto-based producer, musician, and artist Don Pyle was a fledgling photographer cutting his teeth in the e…
It's the first batch of new releases for the summer, and highlights include the latest from Chicago-based artist Tom Krell, who records under the name How To Dress Well. KEXP Music Director Don Yates describes his third album, What Is This Heart?, as a "more expansive take on his intimate blend of …
Has your new summer jam hit the racks? This week, we see new releases from Toronto-collective Broken Social Scene. KEXP Music Director Don Yates notes the group's fifth album (and first in seven years) is "an often-buoyant set of maximalist, psych-tinged pop-rock with a lush, densely produced sound…
Leading up until the Upstream Music Fest + Summit, KEXP will be spotlighting a new local artist from the lineup with an interview and suggested tracks for where to start. Today's post features Seattle hip-hop collective COSMOS, performing Thursday, May 11 on the Sound Off! stage.
