Fly Moon Royalty lit up the KEXP stage this afternoon with their glorious, funky jams. Originating as a twosome in Seattle in 2011, with the powerful voice of Adra Boo and the rapid rhymes of Mike Illvester, they've now grown into a full band, synchronized backup singers and all. Always a crowd fav…
Carpainter is the alias of Tokyo-based DJ/producer Taimei Kawai, one of the most exciting young artists representing the fertile Japanese electronic music scene. A co-founder of beloved Japanese net-label Trekkie Trax, Carpainter's colorful, high-energy, cutting-edge club tracks have been capturing…
Sam Beam's project Iron & Wine is back with a new album, a new single with video, and some tour dates. The single is called "Call It Dreaming" and the video was directed by J. Austin Wilson. The video features Beam and his friends performing in a magical pickup truck that moved by itself withou…
It's hard to believe, but LAKE are celebrating their tenth anniversary as a band this year. The charming Northwest outfit formed in Olympia, debuting at frontman Eli Moore's birthday party, and since then, have released eight full-lengths, four of those on legendary local label K Records. Over the …
On Subjective Concepts Olympia trio Strange Wilds have produced a faultless full length of feedback ridden, jagged jams that have helped bring a riotous, rebellious renaissance to Seattle’s notorious label, Sub Pop. To discuss the cover art, steeped in the same tightrope tension as the music, KEXP …
For a band that's distinctly Scottish, The Vaselines couldn't be more "Northwest", and now more so than ever. Formed by current members, Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee, the Glasgow group released only one album before breaking up in 1989. That might have been the end for their catchy, quirky, charm…
On a rainy Wednesday evening, Annie Clark brought wonder and beauty to Seattle and to the Moore Theater with her St. Vincent return to our fair city. Both of the last times we've had the chance to see clark, it was alongside David Byrne, playing some original material, but mostly cuts from their co…
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. While doing some internet surfing this week, I learned that tomorrow marks 25 years since A-ha hit #1 on the top 40 char…
Ever since we caught sight of Rising Mountains, their 2009 release, we've been fans of Capsula. The Bilbao by way of Buenos Aires band always thrills with their glam rock inspired riffs and pounding rhythms, reminding you as much of Sonic Youth as T.Rex and David Bowie. Their stage shows, in partic…
The name of their 2009 release (2008 in Colombia), “Blow Up”, was prescient. While the music of Bomba Estéreo is stylistically explosive, their popularity at the time of its release was just beginning to grow. We watched them ascend as their in-studio performance from late 2009 quickly became one o…
Well, it is the album that beat out Nevermind in Spin Magazine's Best Albums of 1991 list: Ben Gibbard has announced he'll be covering Teenage Fanclub's Bandwagonesque in its entirety. "Bandwagonesque is my favorite record by my favorite band of all time," he said, via a press release. "It came al…
Another week, another band the Internet knows almost nothing about. If the KCMU DJs circa 1987 are to be believed, Leatherface Gets Religion is not the first release by this mysterious band. Discogs seems to back that up, reporting that most of these tracks come from a pair of 12"s, 1984's 'Gator B…
We're a week away from the release of the new Father John Misty album, the highly-anticipated Pure Comedy, out April 7th on Sub Pop Records. He's been sharing tracks left-and-right all year, including a 13-minute opus titled "Leaving L.A." Today, he offers up the Radio Edit, which whittles it down…
A quick glance at the stage set up for Sunday evening’s show might’ve tipped one off as to the type of music they’d hear for the night. With no drums, no amps, and mostly classical instruments surrounding chairs and music stands neatly arranged in a semi circle across the stage, a rock show was cle…
There's probably a joke somewhere in the fact that Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats played a rousing workout of a show on Bumbershoot's first (and, in quintessential Seattle fashion, only) warm afternoon, but it wouldn't illustrate the Denver, Colorado-singer's performance any better than s…
I learn so much writing these blog posts! For instance, did you know that Michael Penn (whom you probably first heard about for his delightfully earwormy 1989 hit "No Myth," but has since done many serious and critically acclaimed things - not that there's anything unserious about "No Myth," that's…
At every great concert, there's a moment where everything, for lack of a better word, clicks. When the audience moves from excited to engaged, when "wow" turns "holy shit". On the closing night of Sleater-Kinney's three-night stand at the Showbox at the Market, that moment was two-and-a-half minute…
The EMP Pop Conference covers a lot of ground in its panels, discussions, and presentations – where else could you find programming covering both a Missy Elliott retrospective and a roundtable seeking to find out what the worst song ever is? – so it only makes sense that for its Seattle artist show…
The kids may be off to school but former teen group Arctic Monkeys is all grown up. Now on their fifth full-length, out this week, the British-born, LA-based band have left behind any brattiness for what our Music Director, Don Yates, calls "a slower, thicker and more atmospheric rock sound, while …
