Each week, Music Director Don Yates (joined this week by DJ Alex) shares brief insights on new and upcoming releases for KEXP's rotation. These reviews help our DJs decide on what they want to play. See what we added this week below (and on our Charts page), including new releases from Bobby Gillespie & Jehnny Beth, John Grant, Gaspard Augé, and more.
(Various Artists) – Red Hot + Free (Red Hot)
The latest volume in the Red Hot series of compilations to benefit marginalized communities affected by HIV/AIDS is a stellar double-album set of house, disco and other dance styles, featuring a few new songs along with new remixes of many others. — DY
Bobby Gillespie & Jehnny Beth – Utopian Ashes (Third Man)
Primal Scream leader Bobby Gillespie teamed up with former Savages frontwoman Jehnny Beth for this beautifully crafted set of orchestral folk-rock combining a lush, often-foreboding sound with lyrics about a marriage following apart. — DY
John Grant – Boy From Michigan (Partisan)
This Reykjavik, Iceland-based, Michigan-born artist’s fifth solo album is an often-powerful, deeply personal set of brooding electro-pop. Produced by Cate Le Bon, the album combines dark synths, haunting piano, occasional clarinet and sax and more with lyrics inspired by his upbringing in Michigan and Colorado that provide a withering critique of toxic masculinity. — DY
Gaspard Augé – Escapades (Genesis/Ed Banger/Because)
The debut solo album from one-half of the French duo Justice is a cinematic, at times gloriously cheesy blend of soaring prog and disco, featuring a bombastic sound with massive beats, bright synths, occasional strings, flute and other instrumentation, along with some choral vocals and lots of sparkling pop melodies. — DY
The Go! Team – Get Up Sequences Part One (Memphis Industries)
The sixth album from this British band led by Ian Parton is a well-crafted set of buoyant dance-pop inflected with hip hop, shoegazer psych-rock and other styles, combining a variety of brightly colorful instrumentation including keyboards, guitars, horns, flute, glockenspiel, harmonica, steel drums and more with bouncy beats and sunny melodies. — DY
Hurry – Fake Ideas (Lame-O)
This Philadelphia band’s third album is a well-crafted set of hook-filled power pop with jangly guitars, bouncy rhythms, warm harmonies, sunny melodies and lyrics revolving around love and struggling with anxiety. — DY
Snapped Ankles – Forest of Your Problems (The Leaf Label)
This British band’s third album is a potent set of rhythmic post-punk with buzzing synths, percolating percussion, occasional brass, driving, sometimes motorik rhythms and sardonic lyrics. — DY
Desperate Journalist – Maximum Sorrow! (Fierce Panda)
This British band’s fourth album is a solid set of dark post-punk combining chiming guitars, atmospheric keyboards, driving rhythms and soaring melodies with Jo Bevan’s impassioned vocals and often angst-fueled, sometimes self-lacerating lyrics. — DY
Evidence – Unlearning Vol. 1 (Rhymesayers)
The fourth album from this LA-based rapper (and Dilated Peoples member) is a solid set of straight-up hip hop combining beats from a variety of producers with Evidence’s workmanlike delivery and rhymes of struggle and resilience. Special guests include Navy Blue, Boldy James, Conway the Machine, Fly Anakin and Murkage Dave. — DY
Suzanne Kraft – About You (Melody As Truth)
The latest solo album from this alias of chameleonic Amsterdam-based, California-born musician Diego Herrera is an addictive set of fuzzy shoegaze, melancholic guitar-pop, and dreamy noise-pop that consistently delivers. A new look within Suzanne Kraft's extensive discography that has dabbled in everything from slow-motion house grooves to spacious New Age excursions, About You revitalizes and masters a guitar-focused sound that harkens back to the early 2000s when American Analog Set, Broken Social Scene, and The Notwist were all at their peak. — AR
Cedric Burnside – I Be Trying (Single Lock)
The latest album from this Holly Springs, MS artist (and grandson of the great R.L. Burnside) is a potent set of Mississippi Hill Country blues with a stark sound featuring spare, stinging guitar riffs, hypnotic rhythms, emotive vocals and lyrics of love, loss and resilience. — DY
Hypnotic Brass Ensemble – This is a Mindfulness Drill (Jagjaguwar)
Released as the second part of Jagjaguwar’s 25th anniversary celebration, this Chicago-based band’s latest release reimagines Richard Youngs’ 1998 album Sapphie, recasting Youngs’ spare classical guitar arrangements into more full-bodied compositions with horns and other instrumentation, while also featuring an impressive trio of guest vocalists: Moses Sumney, Perfume Genius and Sharon Van Etten. — DY
Jenn Champion + Oyster Kids – Love Nobody EP (Hardly Art)
LA-via-Seattle artist Jenn Champion collaborated with LA artist Andrew Eapen (aka Oyster Kids) for this EP featuring two new songs of ‘80s-steeped dance-pop (along with a stripped-down alternate version of the title song) with propulsive rhythms, moody synths and lyrics of desire. — DY
Wild Pink – 3 Songs EP (Royal Mountain)
This Brooklyn band’s latest release is a potent three-song EP of atmospheric rock with jangly guitars, shimmering keyboards and wistful melodies. — DY
Izzy True – Our Beautiful Baby World (Don Giovanni)
The third album from this Chicago-via-Ithaca, NY band led by Izzy Reidy is a solid set of dynamic indie-rock incorporating elements of post-punk, psych-rock, jazz, folk-rock and other styles, combining guitars and occasional sax and flute with lyrics revolving around acceptance. — DY
Carrie Clark & The Lonesome Lovers – Split at the Seams (self-released)
This Seattle band’s latest album is a solid set of folk-rock with a warm, fairly diverse sound combining guitars, piano, lap steel and accordion with personal lyrics and wistful melodies. — DY
Lucy Gooch – Rain's Break EP (Fire)
The second EP (and Fire Records debut) from this Bristol, UK-based vocalist, composer, and electronic producer finds her evolving upon the dreamy ambient-pop of her breakout early 2020 debut EP for Past Inside The Present Records for a more expansive, upfront, spectral pop sound that carries a whimsical cinematic bent. The opening title track is an immediate highlight that contains shades of Kate Bush. — AR
Each week, Music Director Don Yates shares brief insights on new and upcoming releases for KEXP's rotation. See what we added this week below (and on our Charts page), including new releases from Lucy Dacus, Sault, H.E.R., and more.
Each week, Music Director Don Yates shares brief insights on new and upcoming releases for KEXP's rotation. See what we added this week below (and on our Charts page), including new releases from Cold Cave, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, The Lounge Society, and more.
Each week, Music Director Don Yates (joined this week by DJs Alex and Abbie) shares brief insights on new and upcoming releases for KEXP's rotation. See what we added this week below (and on our Charts page), including new releases from Wolf Alice, Children of Zeus, Loraine James, and more.
