Seattle songwriter Kris Orlowski has the honesty, voice, and soul needed in a great pop folk songwriter. Since the mid-2000s, Orlowski has been on the Seattle circuit building a reputation for the highest quality songwriting with an equally talented band that seems to understand every turn and mood of the songs as well as the songwriter himself. One of the most impressive things about the performances live for KEXP in the videos below is that some of these songs, from his 2012 EP Pieces We Are, featured a seventeen-piece orchestra on record -- but the stripped-down lineup (ahem, see the picture above), only makes it clearer that the majesty and emotive power of Pieces We Are and the other releases were due more to the power of Orlowski's songwriting than the instrumentation (though it is quite beautiful). Watch the videos here:
Full Performance:
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…
Last month, Charles Bradley and the Menahan Street Band stopped by our studio to deliver a special joint session for KEXP listeners. The Menahan Street Band -- featuring members from the NYC Daptone Records soul and funk world including the Budos Band, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, and Antibalas…
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…
