Thurston Moore has nothing to prove after decades spent as part of one of the most influential bands of all time, Sonic Youth. The guitarist, singer, and songwriter has long been worshiped by SY fans and adored by critics as Sonic Youth evolved from brash indie upstarts in the 80s, to semi-commerc…
Portland synth rock group STRFKR have pretty much always put on a great show. But Tuesday night's tour opener in support of new record Miracle Mile was an especially raucous occasion. As Tuesday was release day for the record, the band was a tad light on the Miracle Mile material, but with a back c…
The Replacements were one of the most original and influential rock bands of the 1980s. Their hard-drinking ways made them infamous to many clubs in the Twin Cities and around the country -- including the time when they got themselves famously banned from Saturday Night Live after a particularly i…
Ty Segall is a master of dissonance. He proved as much Saturday at Sasquatch! Music Festival, where discord was found everywhere. From the harsh chords of The Muggers (which include the likes of King Tuff and Mikal Kronin), to the fact that Ty Segall and his drummer donned Grateful Dead shirts whil…
It didn't take long for Merchandise frontman Carson Cox's dry sense of humor to set in with his band's Saturday afternoon crowd. "So we're from Florida," he deadpanned. "Can you believe it?" On a hot afternoon, the hazy qualities of Merchandise's music were brought to the forefront, an effect that …
In 1998, Old Crow Medicine Show were busking in front of Pike Place Market. In 2014, they're headlining the 2,800-capacity Paramount Theatre. Along the way, the Nashville, Tennessee-based group became one of the primary figures in the 2000s roots music revival, bringing the same energy from their b…
Well, can't say we saw that one coming! In the next phase of the ever-evolving state that has come to define them, experimental indie rock chameleons Liars come to us now as... a synth pop band?! Well, perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration. But still, on new record Mess, we find Liars a far cry a…
Easily one of the best albums of the year so far, Muchacho most fully realizes the ideas, sound and aesthetic that Brooklyn (by way of Alabama)'s Matthew Houck has been developing for the past decade as Phosphorescent. Whether spare, lush, atmospheric or raucously barn-burning, the songs on Muchach…
Named after a race of diminutive creatures in Magic: The Gathering, Kithkin's energetic, uplifting indie rock is the type of music that gets the cops called over to house shows (in the best way possible). Although the band's aesthetic is clearly a fantastical one - the self-described "Cascadian you…
KEXP shares our response to Covid-19 as well as ways others can help artists and the community at large.
If the Internet age is defined by one thing, it's probably disposability: the temporal state of everything we define ourselves by. We live in a world that is exponentially unsatisfied with singularity and smallness. Our good intentions for globalization and interconnectedness have gone by the waysi…
Damn, 2013, you are looking good! You just keep hitting us week after week with one killer list of new releases after another. This week, there's no way we're not going to run out to pick up the latest from long-time KEXP favorite Frightened Rabbit. As if there was any doubt that this would land hi…
It's truly mind-boggling that It's Album Time is the first record we've seen from Todd Terje. If you're fond of disco, house, and easy grooving summer dance tracks, you've probably been putting Terje on your afternoon mixes for years in one way or another. The man has more phenomenal remixes than y…
From a patio overlooking the foothills of the Cascade Mountains near Leavenworth, WA, Seattle musician, Josh Rawlings, prepares himself for a month-long writing session with famed Seattle music producer, Ryan Lewis. Rawlings, who has toured with the golden-voiced Allen Stone and is one-fourth of th…
Next on the Iceland Airwaves broadcast live from Kex Hostel was Icelandic musician Sóley. She's a long-time KEXP favorite, having already played the Airwaves broadcast four times (in 2011, 2012, 2014, and 2015) as well as an intimate Kex dormitory performance in 2013. Aside from her popular solo wo…
Today, over five and a half years after my post about Lida Husik's 2nd album and its reception at KCMU, I decided to share her very first album. Way back in 2010, I was lamenting whatever oversight had led to Ms. Husik's not being on Wikipedia, and expressing excitement that she was working on her …
