"Put your hand on the chest / of a heart that is beating" -- the line comes from a song they didn't play during their recent session at KEXP, but it's the same tangibly intimate invitation you get whenever you hear The Barr Brothers's music, like you can actually touch the creative force coursing t…
We knew an excellent in-studio session was in the cards when Canadian rock legends Sloan stopped by KEXP. On their eleventh studio album, Commonwealth, the Toronto quartet split the deck on an ambitious double album, with each band member taking a side represented by a playing card symbol. The four…
Interweaving a patchwork of influences, from '60s psych to outsider folk, Boston band Quilt blanketed the KEXP studios with songs from their latest album, Held in Splendor, out now on Mexican Summer. Stitched together with their unique three-part-harmonies, the ambitious young band explained to DJ …
There's strength in numbers, and that's certainly true in the case of Portland mini-orchestra Typhoon, who swept through the KEXP studios last fall in support of their most recent album White Lighter. Ironically recorded in Happy Valley, Oregon, the new album is a chronological musical diary of fro…
Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Today’s song comes from Greek mast…
Formed in the span of a single weekend – after playing and writing seven songs without leaving a New Jersey house due to a flash flood – the members of Saint Rich play pop music in the vein of Franz Ferdinand and The Stokes. There is something spritely and up about the group's music, the snare alwa…
Next on the KEXP broadcast live from KEX Hostel at Iceland Airwaves is KEXP favorite Mono Town. The Icelandic indie-rock trio, comprised of Bjarki Sigurdsson (vocals, guitar), Börkur Hrafn Birgisson (guitar) and Daði Birgisson (piano), formerly of B.Sig, have a bit of a Britpop-meets-spaghetti-wes…
Do you like dancing in your underwear? Yeah? Do you like dancing in public in your underwear? Well, !!!'s Nic Offer sure does. For their performance at KEXP's broadcast from Doug Fir Lounge during Musicfest NW, the frenetic frontman stripped down to his Some Girls-inspired skivvies before thrusting…
Pixies had little to say, but lots to play at the Paramount Theatre on Sunday, December 3. The alt-rock pioneers, who formed in Boston in 1986, blazed through a 33 song set in just over an hour and a half, speaking a grand total of two words to the crowd between songs. Fans didn’t seem to care abou…
If Thao and the Get Down Stay Down and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were related and they had a uniquely uncompromising third sibling it would be vocal-and-guitar-wailing Weaves. The Toronto four-piece isn't afraid to push the envelop in an free form, experimental effort to expand their own style of …
Nine decades deep into the electronic music genre, and the most startling and effective instrument it uses is still the human voice. From the earliest days of sampling and vocal splicing to the revolutionary vocal manipulations of Bruce Haack and Kraftwerk up through the live vocal looping we've en…
Santa Barbara synthpop group Gardens & Villa have been on the road for nearly four months straight. Ever since their sophomore LP Dunes dropped on Secretly Canadian, they’ve been road-tripping around this county and others, showing off what a new batch of tunes and a refined live show have to o…
It's been half a year since the last Little Big Show, which feels like a lifetime considering the streak the series has held in the last couple years. As it always has, the Little Big Show brings together Starbucks, STG, and KEXP to benefit a local youth arts organization through tickets sales. It'…
"How about this?" Julie Edwards screamed from the drum set halfway through Deap Vally's set, "Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and DFA 1979! This is the friggin' rock n roll circus man!". Edwards remark couldn't be more true - truly, tonight's sinfully good double feature is a match made in heaven. At f…
Last month, Neptune Theatre hosted the latest in our ongoing series of benefit shows as KEXP, Starbucks and STG presented Little Big Show #9, with 100% of ticket sales going to local non-profit Hugo House. Headliners, and long-time KEXP favorites, Cloud Cult performed a typically uplifting set, as …
KEXP can’t get enough of today’s first act, Samaris. They’ve been featured as song of the day, highlighted on several Music that Matters podcasts and yearly top-10 lists, and even played at the station’s New Home Opening in Seattle earlier this year. Today we have the pleasure of having them open d…
Dan Boeckner is far from new to Iceland Airwaves, having played in 2006 as Wolf Parade and in 2008 as Handsome Furs. With his most recent project Operators, Boeckner brought in a packed crowd to KEXP's stage at KEX hostel and an energy that made the normally reserved Airwaves crowd dance so hard it…
Friends of the station Of Monsters And Men have come a long way since KEXP filmed them playing in a living room in Reykjavik, Iceland in 2010. In fact, they've come a long way even since the station filmed them playing on a bluff at Sasquatch in 2012. KEXP was one of the earliest to discover this b…
As time goes by, it's harder than ever to determine what makes a good electronic show from a bad one. Mainstream EDM DJs can make insatiable amounts of money from a pre-mixed "just press play" setlist that they only have to half-heartedly interact with in order to pull off. And with top notch equip…
