With the fate of Sonic Youth up in the air, founding guitarist Lee Ranaldo has found steady ground with his group, The Dust. Backed by fellow SY orphan Steve Shelley on drums, along with guitarist Alan Licht and bassist Tim Lüntzel, Ranaldo's tenth album, Last Night on Earth, is his most collaborat…
At KEXP, we get excited about a lot of Icelandic bands, and we're thrilled to watch so many of them reach the wider audiences they deserve, but few seem as immediately poised for arena rock stardom as Mono Town. The trio's emotive and often explosive songs draw heavily from a shared love for Britp…
Not surprisingly, Valerie June's childhood was steeped in spiritual music at church and R&B and soul music at home. Between her time spent singing with choruses consisting of sometimes hundreds of parishioners and the influence of her father, who booked and promoted concerts near her hometown o…
The Portland trio Modern Kin seem to be addicts for live performances. After stopping by KEXP for a live in-studio with DJ John Richards, the band set up a streaming concert series – seven shows in twenty-four hours – in Mississippi studios for fans all across the world. “The idea of a live show, i…
We were already honored to have legendary musician John Doe of punk pioneers X joining us in the KEXP studio, so you can't imagine our surprise when he walked in with the also-legendary Mike McCready of Pearl Jam. Doe's musical partner Exene Cervenka caught a cold during the Seattle stop for the ba…
The bouncy garage rock of PAWS brings together a pleasant combination of the innocent music one starts to play when one first joins a band and the subtle, nuanced songwriting of seasoned veterans. The Edinburgh three-piece pack in the noise – punching out songs like a heavyweight contender. And the…
With her otherworldly voice, it's hard to pinpoint where songwriter Cameron Mesirow, better as Glasser, is from. Upon first listen to her ethereal electronic sounds and acrobatic soprano voice, you might be inclined to guess she's from Iceland, but the L.A. artist actually just relocated to New Yor…
The Los Angeles band, Las Cafeteras, named themselves after a community space in El Sereno, L.A. where group members met one another and started to learn and play Son Jarocho music together, influenced by regional Mexican folk music. The band feminized the name to honor women, they note. Modern day…
Throughout Okkervil River's in-studio session, frontman Will Sheff keeps breaking into giggles. And if you look closely around the room, you'll see plastic action figures perched on the keyboard or suspended from the mic stand. It's that sense of childlike wonder that Sheff taps into for the band's…
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.
