This week, Seattle electronic duo NAVVI returns with “In Gold”/”Polychrome”, the first new, original material we’ve seen from them since the II EP of last fall, and some of their strongest work yet. NAVVI introduced themselves to us only two short years ago with “Weekends”, and since that minimal, …
Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba are set on changing the way we think about world music. Pushing the limits of traditional West African instruments themselves to embrace western styles and a more versatile melodic range, Bassekou Kouyate is proud of the modern innovations he's made with the ngoni, a…
Saturday night in West Seattle, history was made... or remade... when Northwest legends The Sonics performed a special set at Easy Street Records on Record Store Day to benefit KEXP's New Home. The iconic Tacoma band alone were a huge draw to the legion of fans inside and surrounding the store, but…
Much has been made of The Ruby Suns' globetrotting tendencies, both internationally and musically. American born band founder, Ryan McPhun, left California for New Zealand in the mid '00s and joined Auckland group The Brunettes before forming The Ruby Suns to make blissful, psychedelic multicultura…
LA-natives Allah-Las are about as LA sounding as a car ride through the desert - their sound wasn't made for riding the waves, but for steaming on the beach. Beautiful guitar notes ripple out of a haze of vocal harmonies reminiscent of The Beach Boys. It's hot music for a hot day - "We're feeling k…
David Bazan has a knack for writing dark pop songs. Control, an album he released ten years ago with his former band, Pedro the Lion, is filled with lies, adultery, murder, and some melodies that you'll want to hear over and over again, even while the lyrics give you chills. Bazan and his band perf…
Portland's Moon Duo made maybe one of their most surprising moves yet: showing up and playing a set as a trio. Alright, that's not totally true. They did play with a third member on the KEXP Stage at the Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival, but the band is constantly taking surprising new avenues…
Punk trio Dude York has made a name for themselves in Seattle for being a guarantee for at least a half hour of overflowing joy. As "America's Band," they cannot tell a lie and totally followed through on the promise on Day One of the Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival. Even when they had techni…
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…
Seattle Center was the place to be last Friday night as Brooklyn band A Place to Bury Strangers brought a sonic thunder to the Mural Amphitheatre stage. As you can see from the photos below, it was an explosive performance! Local trio Wimps kicked off the evening, and Portland's Matt Drenik brought…
On July 8th, 2002, a then-unknown New York City band called LCD Soundsystem released their debut single "Losing My Edge." With its humorous lyrics and hypnotic beat, the single became a club hit, and would later be included on "Best Tracks of the Century" lists from Pitchfork and NME.
Brooklyn band The Antlers release their fifth album, Familiars, today, and KEXP Music Director Don Yates calls it, "a gorgeous, deeply felt set of dreamy ambient-pop tinged with elements of elegiac jazz and southern soul on lengthy, slowly swelling songs featuring muted guitars, mournful trumpets, …
Back in 1999, Olympia-based queer feminist artist Wynne Greenwood started the electro-punk trio Tracy + the Plastics. Tracy was the bad-ass lead vocalist, Nikki was on keyboards, and Cola on drums. Oh, and all three band members were actually Greenwood herself.
Join us this Friday, October 28th as KEXP welcomes Laurence “Lol” Tolhurst, founding member of iconic post-punk band The Cure, and author of the new memoir, Cured: The Tale of Two Imaginary Boys, out now on Da Capo Press.
Listening to Seattle band Western Haunts is like stepping into a hazy, disorienting dream. The powerful thuds of percussion against the airy, translucent synthesizers and guitars are amorphous and almost comforting. It's a mood that's perfectly captured and expanded on in the sugar-high video for t…
They say great art can come from sadness, and that seems to be true for the new album from Grandaddy. KEXP Music Director Don Yates notes, "the fifth album (and first in 11 years) from this reunited Modesto, CA-bred band led by Jason Lytle is an impressive return to form featuring consistently stro…
Nashville band Diarrhea Planet get this week's gold star with their third LP, Turn To Gold. KEXP Music Director Don Yates notes the album "features a bigger, more polished sound for their hook-filled blend of punkish power-pop and epic hard rock, along with crisper, more sophisticated songs with mo…
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 Aft…
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 Mor…
