Topping this week's list of new releases is the third album by Chicago band Smith Westerns. While the band's 2011 release, Dye It Blonde, drew tons of comparisons (and a tiny bit of flak) for its fuzzy glam nods to Nuggets-era gems, their new release finds the band aiming for what our Music Directo…
This is the third album by The Jazz Butcher I've covered in this blog series (see also here and here), and I'm embarrassed to admit I have yet to properly spend time getting acquainted with this long-running English band's deep discography. Something tells me that the next several years will be a g…
A review of Fauna Shade's single "Marzipan" described their sound as "Floydian... zapping electronic wiggles." This simultaneously whimsical yet vague description fits the band perfectly: their sound bounces through all the psychedelic subgenres, with droning stoner fuzz meeting some of Tame Impala…
Starbucks, STG, and KEXP collaborate once again to bring you the next installment in their Little Big Show series. I can't believe we are already on #13! Every show in this series does the same thing, each time with a different beneficiary. 100% of tickets sales benefit a Seattle area organization …
What is Iron and Wine anyway? A man? A band? A concept? A sound? For the past decade, Sam Beam has used his stage name to mean all of those things. The Southeastern raised songwriter first caught people's attention in the Northwest, actually, through a demo featured in Yeti Magazine and followed by…
With a bright blue mantra and neon promise to boot, Cut Copy return this year with their fourth LP Free Your Mind. Dan Whitford and the gang don't seem to be slowing down much in their second decade together. Zonoscope, the band's 2011 award-winning classic, took the band's one of a kind combinatio…
Yes, yes, we're all excited that the Postal Service is playing tonight at Key Arena. But did you know that long before the Postal Service there was a band from Chicago called The Service? Neither did I until just now, but based on Trouser Press's description, this sounds like an '80s college radio …
As if the music was reflecting off the bicycles, Gliss' afternoon set at during our SXSW broadcast was a shimmering cooldown after Jovanotti threw a vibrant Italian party in Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop. As the group ran through a set of tunes from their latest LP, this year's Langsome Dans, frontwoma…
Suuns are riding high this year following the release of their second full-length Images Du Futur, and when they showed up to play at KEXP's broadcast in Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop at SXSW the crowd got to see the band burn with confidence through a set of powerful, propulsive post-rock. Suuns alwa…
What's old is new in Seattle. It has been that way for a while, since before even the grizzled-beyond-their-youth folkies made country rock a "thing" in Ballard during the last half-decade. But now, in hepper neighborhoods like Capitol Hill, organ is the new banjo as Western psychedelia of the late…
Aaron Beam, bassist for Portland’s Red Fang, once told me that he believed the long-standing punk-versus-metal dichotomy died when Metallica’s 1984 sophomore album Ride the Lightning came out. I believe he is correct, and the fact that Oakland, California’s Neurosis formed in 1985 only provides mor…
This Friday, Scottish band Belle and Sebastian are releasing the first EP in a series of three that they're calling How To Solve Our Human Problems. Today the band has shared a video for the previously released single "I'll Be Your Pilot" via TIDAL. Frontman Stuart Murdoch explained in an intervie…
Wow, what an unbelievable end to a great day of live music. Day one of the Airwaves broadcast live from Kex Hostel closed with a bang as we welcomed Iceland’s favorite new live act Hatari. Icelandic for "Hater," Hatari was formed by Klemens Hannigan, Matthías Tryggvi Haraldson, and Einar Stéfansson…
On Away, his eighth album with Okkervil River, Will Sheff winds back to the spacious sounds of his early records while visiting more mature topics of death, dissolution and rebirth. During his latest visit to KEXP, the Austin-based troubadour brings a full band to further enliven his new songs and …
It's with great sadness that KEXP reports Dave Rosser, guitarist for The Afghan Whigs, passed away yesterday, Tuesday, June 17th, at the age of 50. Late last year, Rosser was diagnosed with inoperable colon cancer. The band state on their Facebook page:
On Saturday afternoon, Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio debuted three new songs to a capacity crowd at Little London Plane in Pioneer Square. Though the trio finished some of new tunes, including the ironically named "I Don't Want to Play This," as recently as Monday afternoon, there was no way that anyone…
Just announced: LCD Soundsystem has joined the 2017 Sasquatch! Music Festival lineup. The beloved New York City band will replace Frank Ocean as the headliner on Friday, May 26th, as he had to drop out due to production delays beyond his control.
Not only are they today's Song of the Day, but Swedish group The Amazing have one of the best new releases this week. KEXP Music Director Don Yates notes the group's fourth LP is "a somewhat bleaker, more intimate take on the band's atmospheric psych-pop, combining shimmering guitars, celestial key…
The Strokes have shared a trippy, animated lyric video for "Drag Queen" off of their new release, Future Present Past. The four-track EP is out now via Julian Casablanca's own label, Cult Records. As an added bonus, the band and label will open a pop-up shop in New York City on Sunday. [Pitchfork]
