"Be quick dear, times are uncertain, one month crawling, next year blurring, decades in the drain, and monograms on the brain. Decide what's working and what's moved on to the last phase - the floodgate alien days. I love those alien days." And so, Andrew VanWynGarden opens the third MGMT record wh…
We made it out to the Trans Musicales festival grounds last night after we wrapped up filming for the day. The festival grounds are located at the Park Expo, which is a complex of large buildings, a couple of which are the main festival areas, like the food court, for a lack of a better term and I …
"How about this?" Julie Edwards screamed from the drum set halfway through Deap Vally's set, "Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and DFA 1979! This is the friggin' rock n roll circus man!". Edwards remark couldn't be more true - truly, tonight's sinfully good double feature is a match made in heaven. At f…
It's been hard for us to forget the beautiful and intimate session we had with Ólafur Arnalds during our Iceland Airwaves broadcast last year at KEX Hostel. This year, when we saw that the young Icelandic composer and songwriter would be performing at SXSW, we wanted to get him live on air again, n…
Recently, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn declared February to be Seattle Women Who Rock Month. The announcement was spurred by a new play and history project created by Gretta Harley (Maxi Badd, Danger Dens), Sarah Rudinoff, and Elizabeth Kenny called These Streets, a fictionalized story heavily inspire…
Monotown: it's a name you'll be hearing a lot on KEXP, and hopefully everywhere else, in 2013. Over the past several years, our trips to Iceland have allowed us to discover bands sometimes even before they've released any albums (as was the case with Of Monsters and Men in 2010), or at least before…
Bobbing for hits. Though Death Cab For Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard was making light of the his band's songwriting process during his interview with KEXP's Stevie Zoom, the fact is, with all the songs he's written over nearly the past decade, he'd accumulated enough songs he's grown fond of but never…
Opening today’s broadcast live from Kex Hostel at Iceland Airwaves was Finnish singer-songwriter Mikko Joensuu. Over the course of the last year and half or so, Mikko has released a series of three records over the course of a year or so, called Amen 1-3 (Svart records) exploring coming into faith,…
It's another chilly morning in Reykjavík, with the sun shining on the iconic snow-capped Mt. Esja, and the KEXP road crew is here at Kex Hostel getting ready for another great day of live music at Iceland Airwaves Music Festival. We'll be starting the day with exquisite Finnish singer-songwriter Mi…
You know when Hamilton Leithauser is about to hit a key vocal line. Like Arjen Robben dropping his shoulder before shooting on goal or Michael Jordan sticking his tongue out before driving to the hoop, Leithauser pulls the mic away from his face, tightens his shoulders, and then nails it - whether …
And so we witnessed another amazing music festival! This time it was the 4th annual Macefield Music Festival that took place this weekend across Conor Byrne, Tractor Tavern, The Sunset Tavern, and the charmingly bricked streets of Ballard Ave. Macefield Music Festival was named after Edith Macefiel…
Dan Snaith may have started Caribou as a sample-heavy solo project, but after his set at Sasquatch! Music Festival, it is hard to think of Caribou as anything but a live band. Such was the effect of Snaith and his three touring companion’s show Sunday. While Caribou’s more recent work contains a be…
For Plants and Animals, growth can take time. The adventurous Montreal trio took four years to release their fourth album, double the time between each of their previous ones. After years of prolonged touring and rapid recording, the childhood friends Nic Basque, Matthew Woodley, and Warren Spicer …
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…
