KEXP staffers aren't the only Americans to fall under the ethereal spell of Iceland: when musician John Grant played the Iceland Airwaves Music Festival in 2011, he liked it so much, he decided to stay! Performing songs from the album he recorded there, his sophomore release Pale Green Ghosts, Gran…
"We're not one-dimensional human beings, so why should our music be?" asked Honus Honus, the mastermind behind Philadelphia band Man Man. Their names may be repetitive (true to theme, the drummer goes by "Pow Pow"), but this experimental group is anything but, always striving to evolve their quirky…
It seemed like just yesterday that Icelandic singer/songwriter Ásgeir was in Seattle and sitting on a park bench next to Kurt Cobain's house on Lake Washington. Just over a year ago, he was performing from his glorious debut, Dýrð í dauðaþögn, and revealed that he had been working with U.S. born, I…
Despite her delicate stature and soft-spoken voice, Malian musician Rokia Traoré is one strong artist. Since 2012, her West African home has been besieged by a military coup d'état in the capital city of Bamako. The political power struggle has created a tension that fueled her fifth and most power…
"So, what did y'all motherfuckers do to get in here? What makes you VIP? Is this like one of those fucked-up... when the celebrities go play the show at the Eastern European child dictator's party?" So asked Travis Morrison, mischievous frontman for the DC post-punk veterans The Dismemberment Plan,…
If you rolled out a handful of musicians and gave them instruments and told them to all act like toys come to life, you would have the band GROUPLOVE. Equipped with an inclusive, joyous name that also has an intimate connotation, GROUPLOVE plays songs that live up to their moniker. Rainbow guitars,…
For almost two years, Cumulus kept the tracks for their debut album hidden. After beginning their songwriting process in 2011, the group, led by singer/guitarist/songwriter Alexandra Niedzialkowski, slowly but surely put the pieces together while recording in Anacortes, WA, with Phil Elverum. The r…
Cock & Swan members Johnny Goss and Ola Hungerford make beautiful, yet mysteriously herky-jerky music. They compose songs in a dazey space and admit that's the realm in which they like to inhabit. Along with their own music, they've recorded and helped to produce albums for many Seattle bands, …
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.
