Of all the happy-go-lucky twenty-somethings in the world learning to deal with the anxiety of entering the first chapters of independent adulthood and being 100% responsible for one's own actions, there are few you can picture less concerned than Mac DeMarco. If you've played witness to his erratic…
"Stick with the old stuff, Win." That's the advice that Butler gets from Carl the roadie (Rainn Wilson) after playing a bloated, belligerent rendition of Funeral cut "Wake Up" during the fictitious Arcade Fire performance in the Reflektor accompaniment film Here Comes The Night Time. Here, Butler i…
I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp is exactly the succulently-written, shit-talking, salty dog memoir you’d want from the man who dreamed and ignited punk. Richard Hell was a fun-loving little Kentucky cowboy as a kid, loving TV, growing up with peak period 60s Stones and Dylan LPs, dreaming of tak…
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…
Truly, we can't do without you, Dan Snaith. With a discography 15 years deep and only getting sweeter with time, any chance to see Snaith in any venue under any of his monikers is an incredible blessing. In fact, I bet he could have sold just as many tickets throwing a DJ set as Daphni or even just…
When I’ve seen Nils Frahm in the past, it’s been during Decibel Festival, an annual electronic music and visuals festival in Seattle which KEXP covers every year. Because of the event’s interest in creative collaborations, Frahm has been given ample attention to look and sound his best, often paire…
Al Doyle is a wunderkind. Whether he's hopping between three or four different instrument setups at a Hot Chip show, turning the guitar part on "Losing My Edge" into a rock 'n' roll masterpiece at LCD Soundsystem's last show, or having the time of his life jamming out with fellow Hot Chip member Fe…
Today's Song of the Day, as chosen by Cheryl Waters, host of the Midday Show on KEXP, is "All Lined Up" by Sheer Mag, a 2023 single on Third Man Records.
A year after his debut album release, it is no doubt that Benjamin Booker is a rockstar. He's played the festival main stages, toured across the country, and even guitar dueled with Jack White. It's deserved notoriety for a man who makes such a unique blend of punk, rock, blues and folk. And even w…
When last we saw Eoin and Rory Loveless, they were making snotty garage rock for boys not yet men who were sick to death of love, and they were doing it in style. The brother duo Drenge found a way to blend some mixture of romance, boyhood, and senseless violence into an addictive, invigorating mix…
The fact that Turn Blue, the eighth album by The Black Keys, is full of songs about being hurt by a woman shouldn't be all that surprising. Although they, sonically speaking, haven't been a dirty, traditionalist-leaning blues band in a few years now, they remain one at heart, which is why Dan Auerb…
Michael Azerrad, author of the 1993 biography Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana, joins us to talk about his relationship with Kurt Cobain.
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