This Tuesday, Portland synth pop band STRFKR kick off their tour in support of new record Miracle Mile at the Neptune with San Francisco electronic shoegaze artist Blackbird Blackbird. The bill is solid. STRFKR are back stronger than ever on Miracle Mile building off of the perfected pop textures w…
Categorization systems are important for us as humans. It's how we make sense of this sometimes nonsensical world we live in. Which is why as soon as radio delivered us a bevy of different styles of music, we immediately had to put everyone into categories, starting with the basics: jazz, rock, cla…
If you're looking for a last-minute Valentine's Day gift for a music lover, look no further than this week's new releases. Brooklyn-based Sudanese multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Sinkane (aka Ahmed Gallab, former Yeasayer/Caribou/Of Montreal sideman) releases his fourth LP. KEXP Music Director Don Y…
Drenched in color from the LED screens behind him, Chet Faker began his Friday closing set at Sasquatch! Music Festival in style with the help of his four piece band. Alternating between a full band and playing solo on his keyboard and mixer, Chet visually displayed the duality in his music. Often …
Do you like to rock the hell out? Fuzz certainly does. As the last of the sunset faded, a large crowd of people gathered at the Yeti stage at Sasquatch to have their heat stroke blasted away by waves of distortion heavy guitar, fat bass, and driving drums. This three piece does not mess around. Ty …
Talk about a storied past. The Jayhawks rose from the fertile era of Twin Cities rock that also produced such contemporaries as The Replacements, Hüsker Dü, Soul Asylum and Prince. Though they often get tagged as "country rock revivalists" or "alt-country icons", the band's sound and personnel shif…
Whatever "chillwave" as a genre tag was, it's dead. However, its two biggest names, Toro Y Moi and Washed Out, have both (maybe coincedentally) evolved into something a little less ephemeral: electronic-savvy, funk machines. As he's gained more prominence, Ernest Greene's initially bedroom-sized pr…
Throughout the nearly five decades of his career, Aaron Neville has performed and recorded hundreds of songs in a variety of styles, from his Billboard topping 1967 solo R&B classic "Tell It Like It Is" through the creole rock of The Neville Brothers, and he's covered innumerable greats of soul…
In the late 90's, few bands were like Firewater. The NYC band was mixing Balkan folk with contemporary post-punk for sound that would eventually inspire others like Gogol Bordello, Balkan Beat Box, Devotchka and even Beirut. Led by former Cop Shoot Cop frontman Tod A, Firewater became musical world…
Bobbing for hits. Though Death Cab For Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard was making light of the his band's songwriting process during his interview with KEXP's Stevie Zoom, the fact is, with all the songs he's written over nearly the past decade, he'd accumulated enough songs he's grown fond of but never…
Amber Mark is a blossoming NYC-based vocalist making waves in the music world with her stunning voice and vibrant sound that blends R&B, pop, soul, dancehall, and various club styles. She just released her impressive debut mini-album 3:33am, recently appeared on stand-out singles by DJDS, Demo …
Describing My Morning Jacket's live show is almost as difficult as describing their music. While tagging it with a reductive broad stroke isn't that hard ("rock music"), listing out the individual elements that play into the band's style can come off as too disparate to make it their music seem com…
Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba are set on changing the way we think about world music. Pushing the limits of traditional West African instruments themselves to embrace western styles and a more versatile melodic range, Bassekou Kouyate is proud of the modern innovations he's made with the ngoni, a…
Well, doesn't that photo look weird? But, it's time to face the new line-up for Death Cab for Cutie: the band will release their first album without founding member Chris Walla, titled Kintsugi. What's a "Kintsugi", you might ask? It's a style of Japanese art where broken ceramics are fixed using …
There's nothing pretty about Girl Band. In fact, the Dublin-based four-piece play some of the most abrasive pop songs you're likely to hear. But it hadn't always been that way. Singer Dara Kiely and guitarist Alan Duggan had played together in more conventionally "indie" type bands before hitting u…
Even though he's not on a proper tour at the moment, Bob Mould (and his partners in crime drummer Jon Wurster and bassist Jason Narducy) can pump out a set of punk rock seemingly on a moment's notice. Right as Mould's set at Sasquatch was starting, black sheets of rain started to drizzle down, but …
After hours of overcast weather, the sun finally came out for Hozier's afternoon set at Sasquatch, which is ironic, considering that the musician also known as Andrew Hozier-Byrne is from Ireland, a country hardly known for its sunshine. But by the end of his set, it might have seemed that the sun'…
Former Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band frontman Benjamin Verdoes came out to the KEXP studio to perform some of the new songs off his latest, 11-track solo project, The Evil Eye. From the unhinged, experimental undertones of Where The Messengers Meet to the structured melancholy of his new-found colla…
They don't call it the land of fire and ice for nothing. Geographically, Iceland is a land of extremes, from its vast glaciers to its active volcanos. But there must be some space in the middle where the two meet. In Norse mythology, that space, between fiery Muspelheim and icy Niflheim, is where l…
