In early October, KEXP was thrilled to host an evening with leftist icon and buck-the-man songwriter Billy Bragg, as part of Songbook: KEXP’s Music & Literature Series. Over the summer, Bragg released his second nonfiction book Roots, Radicals, and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World, said t…
Pixies had little to say, but lots to play at the Paramount Theatre on Sunday, December 3. The alt-rock pioneers, who formed in Boston in 1986, blazed through a 33 song set in just over an hour and a half, speaking a grand total of two words to the crowd between songs. Fans didn’t seem to care abou…
DJ Kevin Cole crushes it on his latest new music mix featuring Kiasmos, the Gunn-Truscinski Duo, John Maus, Hundred Waters and the cross cultural collaboration of heavyweights Trio Da Kali & Kronos Quartet. 1. Autonomics - Southern Funeral 2. Flat Worms - Pearl 3. Oh Sees - Jettisoned 4. Coc…
"When I was a kid, they didn't allow rappers to reach 44 years old." Atmosphere MC Slug may joke about his middle age ("dad rap - it's what I do now!"), but it belies his sense of pride in the Minneapolis group's two decade career. Joining Kevin Cole in the KEXP studio, Slug an…
Santa Barbara synthpop group Gardens & Villa have been on the road for nearly four months straight. Ever since their sophomore LP Dunes dropped on Secretly Canadian, they’ve been road-tripping around this county and others, showing off what a new batch of tunes and a refined live show have to o…
It's hard to think of an individual who's more of a Seattle Rock Institution than Jack Endino. Whether as a musician or producer/engineer, he's been knee-deep in this city's growing and changing music scene for about three decades. By the time he released Angle of Attack, his first solo album (whic…
His new album Pure Comedy may be in stores now, but Father John Misty hasn't stopped sharing new music. FJM (real name: Josh Tillman) covers the Velvet Underground classic "Who Loves the Sun" off their 1970 LP Loaded for the Mondo Boys score to Shangri-La Suite, a feature-length film from Los Ange…
Every Little Big Show can't help themselves but get better and better each sold out night, which gives the Mitski, Kadhja Bonet, and Mal Devisa Little Big Show #18 coming up next on April 8 a great head start. What is equally great is the partnership between Starbucks, STG, and KEXP to make these p…
Friday evening brought plenty of good sleep. For those at Pickathon who were sung to sweet dreams by Yo La Tengo’s intimate stripped down set the night before, or for those who danced themselves to exhaustion at Ty Segall, a few hours of rest were well appreciated. After all, there is very little o…
Despite the innumerable sources of praise and worship from every corner of the earth, David Bowie somehow finds a way to face a sort of misrepresentation in the modern world, where every new album is slated as a comeback. Each forthcoming effort from the aging rock legend has some sort of Lazarus e…
"Be careful with that beach ball," a grinning AC Newman said one song into the fourth Sasquatch appearance of The New Pornographers' career. At this point, Newman, de facto co-frontwoman Kathryn Calder, and the group are Sasquatch veterans, and they made sure everyone knew it in a particularly unor…
So deep is the pool of local talent these days, there was sparsely room for out-of-town acts on the KEXP Gathering Space stage this weekend. One worthwhile exception was shoegaze four-piece Froth, who traveled from Los Angeles to pay a visit to the crowd at the Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival…
The Flaming Lips pulled off a hilarious April Fool's joke when they released Flaming Side of the Moon as "a companion piece to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon." Now the album does really exist, but it turns out that it was all part of a big stunt by the band and Funny or Die. Watch the band "se…
Bob Casale, founding member and guitarist of Devo, has died at age 61 from "conditions that lead to heart failure." In 1972, Bob and his brother Gerald created one of the most famous bands of the New Wave era. Gerald said, "As an original member of Devo, Bob Casale was there in the trenches with m…
Visually, Wampire are a throwback to the 70’s: button-downs with big collars opened at the top, sunglasses, long and wavy hair. If you didn’t know what year it was, you might think the Doobie Brothers just stepped out of the Mystery Mobile. Musically, Wampire proves worthy of their indie buzz. The …
It’s a long way from Toronto, Ontario, to the Doug Fir lounge in Portland, Oregon, but any travel issues the critically-acclaimed Canadian band Austra had to endure didn’t show at their MusicFest NW performance on KEXP. The band, as usual, was composed, in control, and luminous. Throughout their em…
No one knew it at the time, but Saturday would be the end of Austin City Limits 2013. Rain had been threatening all weekend, and around 9:45 p.m., it finally showed up, and as of Sunday morning, it hasn't left. That being said, Saturday would have been a hard day to top. The weather was (mostly) wa…
Side by side, Trampled By Turtles took the stage during KEXP's broadcast from the Bumbershoot Music Lounge. One can only imagine the roller coaster ride it’s been from the band’s first days to their recent Bumbershoot performance. “The first year of existence of this band was also the last year of …
