Holy shit, Say Hi knows how to get the party started on a Friday night at 9PM! I honestly think I saw more empty drink cups and shot glasses lining the Barboza shelf of subwoofers tonight than I’ve ever seen at their weekly Saturday night dance gigs. In a city on a hill where we show the Rocky Horr…
Ziggy Marley, the multi-Grammy award winning musician and son of Reggae legend Bob Marley, likens being a musician to being a farmer – he waits for the writing season, tends the seeds of ideas, and harvests a crop of songs. "The music comes organically," he says. And what sweet fruit it is. Watch a…
You've got to admire the chutzpah of a British singer-songwriter who names himself after a song and album by one of the most revered American singer-songwriters of the 20th century. (And I suppose you have to admire the chutzpah of an American singer-songwriter who names his song and album after a …
Uncanny! DJ Kevin Cole's favorite band has written a song about his favorite grocery store: listen to a live version of The Replacements performing "Whole Foods Blues" at a recent show in Los Angeles. Frontman Paul Westerberg displays his usual wicked way with words, lamenting his journey to get a…
Death Cab for Cutie is a band that embodies change. From the light-hearted melancholy of "Photobooth" to the heavy-handed post-marital blows of "Cath...", Death Cab have shown us hundreds of ways in which circumstances shift and we find ourselves to be different people when the light changes. We mi…
At his most vitriolic, Billy Bragg is still a softy. The now legendary British singer-songwriter has made a name for himself since the 80's through crooning romantic ballads and biting political critique. Both originate from the same place; for Bragg, as for his hero Woody Guthrie, love for humanki…
Jeff Tweedy (Wilco), Black Belt Eagle Scout and Jay Som talk new music. Noah Gundersen on how he’s getting away from the sad male singer/songwriter trope with his most personal album to date. Former frontman of The Presidents of the United States of America, Chris Ballew says he feels more himself …
Surfer Blood guitarist Thomas Fekete has reached out to the public for funding for his battle against cancer. Fekete underwent surgery a few months ago to have a large tumor from his abdomen, but unfortunately, this rare and aggressive form of cancer has since spread to his lungs and spine. Since …
Kanye West is crazy. Or so people like to say with a sort of flippant superiority. Only thing is, this time around on his highly awaited, hotly debated, and incessantly fiddled with latest album, The Life of Pablo, he’s saying it, too. In three separate instances on the record, he declares instabil…
London, Morrocco, West Africa, Hell, Plastic Beach, Congo, London (again), and now Hong Kong. Damon Albarn's globe-trotting take on pop music has brought him far beyond Britpop, to say the least. But as he travels across the globe and in and out of projects, the line between his personal and preten…
The harsh cold air bites at my hands as I walk toward the Tractor Tavern to see Pedro The Lion play their first Seattle show in 11 years. The harshness of freezing breeze turns my thoughts to Pedro The Lion's "The Longest Winter." "In time memories fade, senses numb," the young David Bazan sings on…
Unless Kanye West decides to use the phrase on his next album, there will only be one love song with the lyric "fingering oblivion" released in 2015 and it's the title track to Father John Misty's sophomore effort, I Love You, Honeybear. It is probably the only time that phrase will ever be used ro…
It’s time again for Friday on My Mind. Our weekly blog post where we look at videos centered around one common theme. This is a collaborative effort between KEXP and King 5 News. I doesn't feel more like summer to me than when the Concerts at the Mural begin. We present these free shows along with …
Comedian, writer, actor and director Mike Birbiglia and his also-multi-talented wife Jen Stein – whose cat is named Mazzy Star – curate and discuss some of their favorite songs and recording artists, including Tegan and Sara, Sharon Van Etten, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah featuring Matt Berninger, The…
The last time Southern troubadour Bill Callahan came to Seattle, he played a quiet, solemn show at the Triple Door. And on Wednesday night at his sold out show at Neumos? He was dare I say, peppy? Or at least as "peppy" as the Songwriter Formerly Known as Smog can get.
Second on today's broadcast live from KEX hostel at at Iceland Airwaves Music Festival was Icelandic singer-songwriter Axel Flóvent. Axel has achieved recent international prominence after years playing in his hometown of Húsavik (a small fishing village in the north of Iceland), and all around his…
A mere week after we aired his KEXP in-studio session, and Boise-based artist Trevor Powers, a.k.a. Youth Lagoon, has announced he's calling it quits. In a statement on Twitter, the bright young artist writes, "there is nothing left to say through Youth Lagoon. It will exist no more." Read the com…
Merge Records rocker Mikal Cronin continues to kill it in the music video realm. Earlier this month, he enlisted comedians Kristen Schaal, Paul Scheer, and Kurt Braunohler to remake a Natalie Imbruglia video (watch here). Today, he tackles the clip for Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al” for his own…
For creators and fans alike, music has always provided catharsis, relief and healing. But Few artists tap so directly into that power as Tim Showalter, whose project Strand of Oaks goes so far as to name its most recent album Heal. Like pages from a diary, the Philly-based songwriter's lyrics delve…
In the 1990’s and early 2000’s, there was a plethora of rapping over rock music. But it didn't long for this amalgamation, which amounted mostly to bad pop music, to fade. Northwest group The Saturday Knights found a formula that really worked, though, avoiding that fleeting (and dare I say, money …
