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 Saba, Black Country, New Road, Ivy Sole, and more.
Saba – Few Good Things (Pivot Gang)
This Chicago rapper’s third album is an impressive set of expansive hip hop combining a variety of inventive beats with his deft flow and incisive rhymes revolving around poverty, fear, insecurity and other weighty subjects. — DY
Black Country, New Road – Ants From Up There (Ninja Tune)
This British band’s excellent second album features a warmer, more melodic take on the band’s sprawling, experimental post-punk. The band’s dynamic, shape-shifting sound now often revolves around bittersweet chamber-pop while also incorporating elements of jazz, classical, klezmer and other styles on often-poignant songs of anxiety and heartache. (Days before the album was released, lead vocalist Isaac Wood announced he was leaving the band due to mental health concerns.) — DY
Ivy Sole – Candid (Les Fleurs)
This Philly-based rapper’s third album is a potent blend of hip hop and R&B inflected a times with gospel, psychedelia and other styles, featuring a warm sound combining shimmering keyboards and bumping beats with their agile delivery and poetic lyrics revolving around relationship struggles. — DY
Animal Collective – Time Skiffs (Domino)
This Baltimore-bred band’s 11th album is an impressive set of warm, mostly lowkey psych-pop inflected at times with dub, exotica, jazz and other styles, featuring a reverbed sound combining a variety of colorful instrumentation with sunny harmonies and buoyant melodies. — DY
Mitski – Laurel Hell (Dead Oceans)
This New York artist’s sixth album is a diverse set of ‘80s-steeped pop-rock ranging from bright, propulsive synth-pop to moody ambient-pop, with the songs revolving around troubled relationships and disaffection with the musician life. — DY
yeule – Glitch Princess (Bayonet)
The second album from this Singaporean-born, London-based producer/vocalist (aka Nat Ćmiel) is a potent set of atmospheric cyber-pop combining often-haunting, glitchy textures with their ethereal vocals and often-dark lyrics revolving around alienation and mental health. — DY
Los Bitchos – Let the Festivities Begin! (City Slang)
The debut album from this London-based band comprised of members from Sweden, Uruguay, Australia and London is a cinematic, mostly instrumental blend of cumbia, surf, Turkish psych-rock, spaghetti western and other styles, combining a brightly colored sound with dance-friendly rhythms. — DY
The Reds, Pinks & Purples – Summer at Land’s End (Slumberland)
The fourth album from this project spearheaded by San Francisco artist Glenn Donaldson is a strong set of melancholy indie-pop with jangly guitars, shimmering keyboards and wistful melodies. — DY
Cate Le Bon – Pompeii (Mexican Summer)
This Joshua Tree, CA-based Welsh artist’s sixth album is a well-crafted set of inventive, mostly lowkey avant-pop combining a densely layered blend of synths, guitars, piano, saxophone, clarinet and fluid rhythms with her serene vocals and dread-filled lyrics. — DY
Modern Nature – Island of Noise (Bella Union)
The second album from this project spearheaded by British artist Jack Cooper (formerly of Ultimate Painting and Mazes) is a well-crafted, moody blend of prog-pop, folk-rock, jazz and post-rock, featuring an imaginative, often-lowkey sound with hushed vocals and often-dark, somewhat cryptic lyrics for these troubled times. The album’s impressive supporting cast includes saxophonist Evan Parker, pianist Alexander Hawkins and violist Alison Cotton. — DY
Pinegrove – 11:11 (Rough Trade)
This New Jersey-bred band’s fifth album is an often-poignant set of emotive folk-pop with a warm sound combining guitars, keyboards and other instrumentation with glowing harmonies and often-dark lyrics ranging from climate change, racial unrest and pandemic life to more personal struggles. — DY
Maverick Sable – Don't Forget to Look Up (FAMM)
This London-based Irish artist’s fourth album is a well-crafted blend of moody R&B and hip hop, combining an atmospheric, at-times folk-tinged sound with gospel-steeped harmonies along with his own soulful vocals and often-dark lyrics of heartache and isolation. — DY
Orlando Weeks – Hop Up (Play It Again Sam)
Boasting a sound that quickly recalls contemporaries Westerman and Bullion as well as shades of Arthur Russell, this sophomore album from London's Orlando Weeks is a sharp set of dreamy, elegant, synth-tinted folk-pop with a technicolor 80s streak that's distinguished by his plaintive vocal style. — AR
Massy Ferguson – Joe's Meat & Grocery (North & Left)
This Seattle band’s sixth album is a well-crafted set of hard-charging roots-rock combining electric and acoustic guitars, driving rhythms, warm keyboards and occasional other instrumentation with lyrics of blue-collar struggle and resilience. — DY
Gracie Gray – anna (Hand in Hive)
This LA artist’s second album is a solid set of brooding bedroom pop with a lo-fi sound combining atmospheric guitars and keyboards, brooding rhythms and occasional other instrumentation and samples with her haunting vocals and lyrics of fading relationships. — DY
Marissa Nadler – The Wrath of the Clouds EP (Sacred Bones)
This Nashville-based artist’s latest release is an evocative five-song EP of haunting, psych-tinged folk-pop combining an atmospheric sound with her ethereal vocals and hypnotic melodies. — DY
Soichi Terada – Asakusa Light (Rush Hour Music)
Tokyo-based electronic producer and Far East Recording label founder Soichi Terada has been active on the underground scene since the late 1980s, yet he received rejuvenated acclaim in 2015 following the release of Sounds from The Far East, a compilation curated by revered Berlin-via-Amsterdam DJ/producer Hunee that collected highlights from Soichi's deep discography. Inspired by the success of that release, Soichi returned to the studio to create his first house-focused album in 25 years and he's emerged with Asakusa Light, a stellar return-to-form for the legendary producer as he reveals a consistently sweet set of deep house grooves featuring his trademark transportive melodies and glowing chords propelled by nostalgic synths, throwback drum machines, and his palpable cheery spirit. — AR
Julien Dyne – Modes (Soundway)
The 5th full-length album from this veteran Auckland, New Zealand-based musician finds him continuing to masterfully filter percussive jazz, tropical house rhythms, and soulful psych-pop elements through a kaleidoscopic, addictive, loungey lens. While his lush productions consistently dazzle, Modes features guest appearances from some of New Zealand's finest vocalists and musicians, including Lord Echo, Electric Wire Hustle's Mara TK, Fat Faddy Drop's Dallas Tamaira (aka Joe Dukie), Allysha Joy, Ladi 6, Che Fu and Troy Kingi. — AR
Bitch – Bitchcraft (Kill Rock Stars)
This LA-based artist’s latest release is a diverse set ranging from anthemic New Wave dance-pop and throbbing disco-pop to soaring, violin-led power ballads, with the album’s often-pointed lyrics blending the political and the personal. — DY
Tambino – Sin Miedo EP (El Niño)
Tambino is the solo alias of emerging Peruvian-born, NYC-based musician Kam Tambini, formerly of the band Glass Gang. His second EP is an inventive set of genre-blurring Latin jams that finds him evolving upon his self-billed "cumbiagaze" sound with Baile funk, chillwave, and psych-pop flourishes. — AR
DJ Hank – City Stars EP (Hyperdub)
The second EP (and Hyperdub debut) from this emerging Chicago-based electronic producer is a razor-sharp set of captivating juke/footwork rhythms that finds him building off the genre's frenetic 160bpm foundations and infusing his shifty beats with magnetic R&B samples and sonic elements inspired by Japanese environmental ambient music of the 1980s. — 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 Amber Mark, Samm Henshaw, Imarhan, and more.
Each week, Music Director Don Yates (joined this week by DJ Alex) 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 Yard Act, Silverbacks, Anxious, 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 Earl Sweatshirt, FKA twigs, Bonobo, and more.
