As major labels continue to exist behind the times, artists and labels with little capital and lesser reputations are producing some of the most innovative, interesting, and inspiring music. Whether it’s creating a new niche in digital technology or looking to once obsolete formats, Agitated Atmosp…
As major labels continue to exist behind the times, artists and labels with little capital and lesser reputations are producing some of the most innovative, interesting, and inspiring music. Whether it’s creating a new niche in digital technology or looking to once obsolete formats, Agitated Atmosp…
Recently, Seattle Weekly posted a piece called "A Year of Emergency". While the piece deals with the city's prevailing homelessness epidemic, the societal range to which the phrase could be extended this year is nearly infinite. Human empathy is facing a year of emergency, and for better or worse, …
Sleigh Bells have changed. I still remember the afternoon that my friend introduced me. "It's like a pep rally for gladiators", she said, laughing, pointing me to the self-titled EP, "their cover looks like Jimmy Buffett but their Myspace says they like Korn". It was a reasonable introduction, effo…
With his work as Ricky Eat Acid, Say Ray functions inside a sporadic group of bedroom production geniuses, whose works are as intentional and impactful as they are fleeting. Under an output heavy Bandcamp-driven new model, the line between album, EP, mixtape, or otherwise is blurred or disregarded …
Swedish indie pop band The Radio Dept. have never been optimists, but with new record Running Out of Love, they are really going out of their way not to see any silver linings. "There's nothing gracious about our kind", Johan Duncanson sings on opener "Sloboda Narodu" (yes, that is the famous Yugos…
Timely does not even begin to describe the new record from NYC rappers Heems and Riz MC, a.k.a. Swet Shop Boys. While it's depressing as hell, these two dudes seriously could not have picked a better week to drop an album about basic human rights being put up into contention. As the race towards Vo…
Back in 2013, Noel Gallagher said he was too busy talking about Jagwar Ma to reform Oasis. That was before their first record was even released, and once their debut, Howlin, hit the airwaves, Sydney's Gabriel Winterfield and Jono Ma quickly entered the ranks of Tame Impala and Django Django. Jagwa…
“Everyone is dressed up, everyone to the nines”, Mike Kinsella whispers on the album’s closing track, “Someone must have found love or someone must have died”. That sentence - perhaps better than any other on the record - embodies the perfect mixture of awareness and distance that has haunted Ameri…
In 2018, KEXP celebrated the 30th anniversary of local record label Sub Pop with a four-month retrospective, "counting up" every catalog number in their vast discography of over 1,200 releases. Dig into the archives of our catalog coverage, featuring in-depth coverage on the history of their releases.
