Dee Dee, songwriter and main force behind the Dum Dum Girls, stopped by the KEXP studio to chat with Stevie Zoom and perform alone with just her heavy-tremolo-ed guitar. Her Girls-less performance is a throwback to the early 2008 to 2010 years, which saw Dee Dee's first CDR release on her own label…
Prolific Garage-rock force Ty Segall gave an interview with Stereogum that offered some interesting new tidbits of information about the musician. For one, he no longer lives in San Francisco. Secondly, he's not a huge fan of smoking weed. But most interestingly, he's very interested in making a hi…
KEXP seems to get gayer every year, and this year's Big Gay Podcast, featuring twenty tracks spanning more than 40 years, is no exception. With everything from vintage queer country to an electronic interpretation of a black metal classic, El Toro's 2014 roundup of songs by, for, and about the LGB…
KEXP presents rotating art shows in its public Gathering Space.
The increasingly common trend of anniversary tours has further validated a longstanding posit that, for better or for worse, audiences and performers both hold: almost everyone wants to hear your old material more than they want to hear your new material.(There is a reason Paul McCartney closes wit…
There are few better ways to ring in the new year than staying up until 2am dancing incessantly to furious house music. Thankfully for us, John MacLean and Marcus Marr agree with us, and this week's The Juan MacLean show at the Nectar Lounge was a pretty fantastic way to kick off another year of li…
Chris Bathgate talks about his new record, The Significance of Peaches, which was released after living in a national forest in Michigan, farming in California, working at a tech startup in San Francisco, having a child and moving back home to Michigan.
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This week in El Sonido, I’ve got a video round-up and mixtape preview of Primavera Sound 2017.First though, a quick recap of my favorite things from last year. Hands down I have to say my favorite performance from 2016's edition of Primavera was PJ Harvey. I've been a super fan since the early 90s,…
2014's Decibel Festival opening gala focused on bringing three of the PNW's finest electronic acts to the most central space of this year's festival, the EMP's Sky Church. The massive iconic space felt hallowed as excited people filled in. Opening the showcase was Vancouver's Sabota - with smooth l…
Here's a killer word for your next round of Scrabble: Divisionary. You can thank delightful Portland band Ages and Ages for that knock out; it's the title of their second album. What does it mean? Splice together "division" and "visionary" and you can explain how even the best intentions sometimes …
"I'm sorry, I have to interrupt. My mind was just blown," DJ Cheryl Waters revealed after Milagres opened their recent in-studio session at KEXP with "The Letterbomb." With its funky drums and shifts between baritone and falsetto, it's easy to see why Milagres' music made her feel this way. In fac…
It’s been quite a year for Matthew Hemerlein. The Los Angeles-based musician operating, under the name Lo-Fang, has been piecing together his debut record Blue Film since 2009. First as a mixtape, now as a fully rendered personal work, the collection of songs seen here is awe-inspiring and striking…
R-Pal is the DJ alias of Seattle's Rachel Kramer. Active on the local DJ scene since first getting behind the decks in 2013, Rachel currently runs a cassette mixtape series called Technodad alongside KEXP's own DJ Sharlese and is a member of Seattle's TUF, a female/non-binary/trans collective based…
KEXP in-studio performances continue on Day 2 of Bumbershoot with Jagwar Ma. The Sydney psych band may have blown the world away with their 2013 debut Howlin’, but with the first few singles from upcoming album Every Now & Then, it looks like they are bent on maintaining their skyrocket traject…
It's that time of year again: MoPOP’s Sound Off! has been pitting local bands against each other for 16 years now. The all-ages "battle of the bands" has introduced us to acts like The Lonely Forest, Naked Giants, Manatee Commune, and more. Every Friday night this month, a new band will progress to…
Earlier this week New York duo Cults (Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion) teased a possible new album by sharing a 20-second clip of a song called "Gilded Lilly" on Instagram. Today they announced the new album, called Offering, and shared its title track, their first release in four years after 20…
There was something magical about the Sunday night Sasquatch Music Fest performance by The Shins. Or maybe it just felt "magical." The stage was covered in giant paper flowers, with stems taller than the musicians and blooms bigger than their heads. (Ego jokes aside; everyone seems to have perfectl…
Welcome to Pickathon's 2016 Spring Season. Each week, the rustically set, Portland-area festival is running an ambitious program of four new episodes. Through twelve individual channels of content, you can experience this one-of-a-kind festival in the most intimate of ways... you'll go, On The Farm…
