As Cheryl Waters jokes, it's taken over ten years to get Trevor Powers' band Youth Lagoon in the KEXP studio. Really, the band has only been around since 2010 - it just feels like we've all been waiting that long. We were all happy finally to have wrangled Youth Lagoon come grace us, and the timing…
Every once in a while, I post an album from a band that's been so minimally documented on the Internet that I feel I'm adding significantly to the body of public knowledge about them with one little blog post. This is dangerous because usually I know next to nothing about these bands. Take Ism, for…
She may be young (she just turned 22 in March), but New York's Frankie Cosmos (real name: Greta Kline) literally has too many albums to count, in that, I tried, and I got tired of counting. With album titles like the landlord LOVES restaurants! (2011) and Collaborative Farting (2011), and song titl…
Perfume Genius mastermind Mike Hadreas is a local, but it wasn't until the 2010 Matador 21 anniversary shows in Las Vegas that I first saw him live. Sandwiched on the bill between two iconic heavyweights (Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Cat Power, for crissakes), Mike sat timidly behind his piano w…
Twenty-plus years into a varied and universally celebrated career, Spoon can still surprise and delight us. They Want My Soul, the Austin-based band's follow-up to 2010's Transference, has all the Spoon hallmarks you expect: the fiery voice of frontman Britt Daniel, the wry if sometimes bittersweet…
Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the day podcast subscription . This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJ’s think you should hear. Today’s song, featured on the M…
Over the last eight years, alt-country band The Maldives have become one of the Northwest's most celebrated and liked bands. Their live shows are joyful occasions that bring the crowd together, as all good concerts do, with swagger, soul, and hearts-on-sleeves abandon. The Ballard-based band stop…
Whether it's their surroundings, the air, the water, the isolation or a communal appreciation of the arts, something has given Icelanders a lock on creating otherworldly sonic landscapes. Sigur Rós and Björk are of course the most famous of them, but if you've been listening to KEXP's broadcasts fr…
"There are so many mountains in the world, but not all of them are on the top 10 list... but if you stand on top of one, you feel like you're on the highest point on earth." This is the concept behind super-duo Minor Alps. Multi-talented musicians Matthew Caws of Nada Surf and Juliana Hatfield do j…
Celebrating their fourth LP, A Man Alive, Thao and the Get Down Stay Down stopped by KEXP to throw a little pre-release party. Though the new songs are energetic and completely accessible, as Thao explains to the Midday Show's Cheryl Waters, recording A Man Alive was an incredibly personal, at time…
Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Today’s song, selected by Midday S…
Local duo Shabazz Palaces have announced a new album on the way, Quazarz: Born on a Gangster Star out July 14th via Sub Pop. Check out the first single "Shine a Light (feat. Thaddillac)" below, via a lyric video directed by Cristina T. Bercovitz and Jonathan Snipes of clipping. In addition to Thad…
In the years I've been doing this series we've talked about Daniel Johnston a couple times, and we've talked about Shimmy Disc many (many, many) times - so isn't it about time we hit both in one post? 1990 was the massively prolific singer-songwriter's first album not to appear under the Stress lab…
Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Today’s song, selected by Midday S…
