While the standout track of Ages & Ages' 2014 sophomore album, Divisionary, surely still has you singing "Do The Right Thing" in grandiose fashion, the Portland group has not been content to sit idly behind the success of a past project. Instead, they have been hard at work crafting their third…
Rock n' roll legend Fats Domino has passed away at the age of 89, due to natural causes. Born Antoine Domino in 1928, "Fats" combined the bluesy sound of his hometown of New Orleans with a boogie-woogie style to become one of the top artists of the 1950s and early '60s, including the hits "Ain't T…
Happy 2015! As always at the beginning of a new year there's been a lot of looking back at the year that just passed, but in this series I tend to cast my glance a bit farther back. So let's take a trip to 1984, and a little straight edge hardcore band from Boston called D.Y.S. I'm actually pretty …
Adult Swim has been on a roll with music lately. If you recognize the name at all, most know Adult Swim from their late night spot on Cartoon Network, giving home to cult classic TV like Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Sealab 2021, and Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job!, and also ridiculous parodies in…
You should expect chaos when a world full of musicians enters your room. Even as the live session began, the twelve members of Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros were still scrambling to find their place and check their tuning. But it fits their neo-hippy vibe. After all, long before Josh Tillm…
"This is an instrumental about weed," Acapulco Lips bassist Maria-Elena Juarez said pointedly as the band started their set at the KEXP stage. It got giggles at first, but the second they started leaning into their psych-meets-surf jam, the laughter turned into dancing and some serious vibing. It w…
Geotic is the alias of Los Angeles' Will Wiesenfeld, a multi-faceted artist that also releases music under the name Baths. His works under the Geotic moniker have often been self-categorized as "passive listening" music, quietly providing a home for his more ambient and meditative creations that fa…
Though they hail from Los Angeles, Dengue Fever are like Cambodian ambassadors to the Pacific Northwest. On their recent return to the KEXP airwaves, the six-piece seemed right at home, even in our new studio. The band's instrumentation is uniquely cinematic, a multicultural modernization of the ps…
Essaie Pas is Marie Davidson and Pierre Guerineau, a married singer and engineer from Montreal, who have worked as individual artists as well as making three prior Essaie Pas records before this one. Demain marks a special milestone for them as their first for DFA, a label which continues to give h…
Of the experiences that KEXP listeners tell us they value most, the intimate, personal interactions between artists and fans always ranks the highest. In our interviews and in-studio videos, we try to get as close to the heart as possible, but occasionally we are able to dive further into the creat…
Anacortes: gateway to the Washington's San Juan Islands. Home to artists like Karl Blau, Phil Elverum and The Lonely Forest. Soon to be know for another new band, BellaMaine. The young indie rock group, led by married duo Nick and Julianne Thompson, immediately caught the attention of KEXP's Mornin…
Killer Mike, rapper and half of the duo Run the Jewels, took a stand against Mike Pence's announcement that he had left the Colts vs 49ers game because the players peacefully protested by kneeling during the national anthem. "I wonder how he feels about the constitution. The document that contains …
Baltimore synth-pop group Future Islands found a new home on 4AD for their fourth LP, Singles. Though their prior years at Thrill Jockey have given us some incredible music over the years, whoever it is over at 4AD that got the wonderful task of marketing this band and this record for a Future Isla…
She may be young (she just turned 22 in March), but New York's Frankie Cosmos (real name: Greta Kline) literally has too many albums to count, in that, I tried, and I got tired of counting. With album titles like the landlord LOVES restaurants! (2011) and Collaborative Farting (2011), and song titl…
As Cheryl Waters jokes, it's taken over ten years to get Trevor Powers' band Youth Lagoon in the KEXP studio. Really, the band has only been around since 2010 - it just feels like we've all been waiting that long. We were all happy finally to have wrangled Youth Lagoon come grace us, and the timing…
Sun Liquor and Silversun Pickups - the pairing pretty much writes itself - yet there's so much more to the LA band's relationship to KEXP and history behind their generosity in performing an exclusive show for our donors. Our love for Silversun Pickups goes back to their debut EP, Pikul. KEXP was n…
Indie rock stalwarts Interpol returned to the scene earlier this year with a fantastic new LP, El Pintor, ten tracks of ageless Interpol mastery, heavy on the guitar hooks and light on filler. After a brief foray on a major label with 2007's impossibly underrated Our Love To Admire, tumultuous band…
These days, we all want love letters from Father John Misty. While the stage persona of former Seattle based songwriter Josh Tillman rose to indie stardom following his somewhat calculated invention and an inventive debut filled with 70's inspired soft rock, expansive folk melodies and nearly exces…
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…
Warhol would've been proud. Although the wigged genius fostered relative grumps like the Velvet Underground as his house band, his own art was often considered just this side, if not over the line, of parody. Warhol was both revered and despised for presenting such common items as soup cans or doll…
