We may never know what 1984 KCMU DJs thought of Joe Jackson's Body and Soul, the follow up to Night and Day (on which we have plenty of input from the contemporaneous DJs). It's pretty likely that many of those who loved his early stuff remained less than pleased with his doubling-down on the highl…
Pulling this album from my digital pile of photos brought up an interesting (to me, anyway) bit of synchronicity. The last time I posted about the Smiths, I wasn't yet a father - being an adoptive dad, I didn't even know that I would have a son in a matter of weeks. Now I have a boy who will turn …
Going into Jagwar Ma’s Saturday night set at the Yeti Stage at Sasquatch, fans had plenty of reasons to be excited about the Australian trio’s hour-long set. The group has opened for Tame Impala and the xx, two other bands who have made being an introvert sound very cool again, and they've released…
Last year, legendary singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen passed away at the age of 82. Today, his son Adam shares a posthumous video for the track "Traveling Light" using previously unseen footage of his father. The video was co-directed with Sammy Slabbinck, who also worked on Cohen's final album You…
Congratulations to Mavis Staples, who just won a Grammy last night for Best American Roots Performance. It's great timing as the legendary blues singer will release Livin' On A High Note, on Friday. This, her fourteenth studio album, features songs written by Justin Vernon, M. Ward, Benjamin Booker…
The owls may not be what they seem, but neither does David Lynch. As a director, writer, musician, actor, artist, even furniture designer, he truly does it all. It's no surprise that his surrealistic influence extends to the music world, so on today, his 69th birthday, KEXP pays tribute to Lynch wi…
There is something both completely Polish and non-Polish about Lautari, the band featured this week in our series of Polish bands KEXP recorded while at the OFF Festival in Katowice. The award-winning ethno-jazz quartet, whose members hail from central and southern Poland, draw their name from the …
"Your hippocampus does it alright" That astute observation from Built to Spill's Doug Martsch on his cerebral ode to memory function is a heck of an understatement when it comes to Twin Cities band Hippo Campus. The young four-piece is quickly becoming the pride of the St. Paul scene with their bre…
Well, who saw that coming? Wilco have unleashed a surprise new full-length this morning, and are offering it as a free download through August 13th. A CD version hits stores on August 21st, and the vinyl comes out November 27th. The hilariously-named Star Wars is the band's 11th studio album. Stre…
Next month we celebrate the 20th birthday of High/Low, the timeless full-length debut from New York indie rock stalwarts Nada Surf. The band celebrated the milestone in great fashion, reissuing the record on beautiful orange vinyl through Vinyl Me Please and giving it a fantastic packaging makeover…
I don't know if there's a UK producer on the scene who has had a bigger 2014 than Hudson Mohawke. The Glasgow native has been riding an unstoppable wave of momentum that hasn't stopped since his collaboration with Lunice, TNGHT, put out their eponymous EP back in July of 2012. Since then, I don't t…
After a short-lived but dramatic hockey residency, Seattle supergroup Who Is She (members of Chastity Belt, Tacocat, and Lisa Prank) return with their second album.
The first performance of our Hood to Hood 2013 broadcast is a special collaborative performance by Jon Russell, Damien Jurado, and Tomo Nakayama, all Seattle based singer-songrwriters. So far Jon Russell has played just one show as a solo musician, an acoustic show at Neumos, though he has been pla…
NASA thinks otherwise, but according to the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar, the world will end today. Even if the Mayans couldn't rightly predict their own demise, who knows? We may have only one more day left on Earth. If that's the case, we're going out swinging! All day, KEXP DJs are playing s…
Morrissey revealed yesterday the source of his ongoing health problems, which have led to tour date cancellations in the past two years: he was being treated for cancer. Moz told Spanish-language newspaper El Mundo that he currently feels "good" but also stated "If I die, then I die. And if not, t…
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 …
The UK dominates this week of new releases with standout albums from two British duos. The mysterious twosome known as Jungle release their self-titled debut with XL Recordings, which KEXP's Music Director Don Yates describes as "an excellent set of retro-futuristic electro-funk with shimmering key…
There's not much information out there about the '80s Seattle band Mondo Vita. Their leader Eric "Travis" Wilson (who has been working as a musician in Las Vegas for the past decade) claims on his own web site that the band "appeared on every TV station Seattle had to offer. They also populated th…
The bad news is, the Sasquatch! Music Festival has announced they'll be canceling the Fourth of July line-up, due to poor ticket sales. The good news is, the Paramount have already snatched up headliners Kraftwerk to bring their 3-D extravaganza to their stage on July 1st. Tickets go on sale Frida…
The Los Angeles band, Las Cafeteras, named themselves after a community space in El Sereno, L.A. where group members met one another and started to learn and play Son Jarocho music together, influenced by regional Mexican folk music. The band feminized the name to honor women, they note. Modern day…
