Over the past few years, we've heard an R&B and soul music revival bubbling up from within everything from electronic to rock - and on the psychedelic end of that revival comes Unknown Mortal Orchestra. First grabbing attention in 2010 with an anonymously posted track “Ffunny Ffrends” as the pr…
A sizable crowd gathered at KEX Hostel quite early in the day to catch strange and wonderful music from young English experimental electro-pop duo Let's Eat Grandma. The teenage band is comprised of lifelong best friends Rosa and Jenny, who display wisdom and musical prowess well beyond their years…
From April 20 to April 23, MoPOP hosted their annual Pop Conference, uniting writers, academics, and musicians for a weekend of uninhibited music geekery. This year's conference provided visitors with a nearly overwhelming number of panels, roundtables, and performances to choose from. Rock crit do…
2015 has now officially seen its first perfect debut of the year, and the award goes to Ibeyi. Last year, we got a wonderful double A-side introduction to the twin duo of Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Diaz with the Oya EP, together with "River". Now, we have a full 46 minutes of pure magic and mystery that…
Both Friday and Saturday's Decibel Festival festivities were stacked top to bottom with incredibly good sets, at pretty much every venue in the greater Seattle area. And somehow this year, the festival organizers have done an incredible job at giving each set an incredible sense of creative continu…
London post-punk band Savages made an explosive entrance onto the American scene last year at CMJ (and then this year at SXSW) and have quickly become one of the most anticipated new acts of year. And after witnessing them live for the first time on Seattle soil, all this writer can say is this: no…
Tuxedo is the collaborative project between Michigan-raised, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter/producer Mayer Hawthorne and veteran Seattle-based producer Jake One. Bonding over a shared love of early 1980s boogie, disco, funk, and R&B, the pair soon connected to create modern-day jams steepe…
Los Angeles' Adrian Younge is a self-taught musician and highly sought-after analogue soul/funk/R&B/hip-hop producer. Bursting onto the music scene with his soundtrack to the 2009 blaxploitation parody/homage flick Black Dynamite, Younge has emerged as a distinctive artist and recording enginee…
It was a busy weekend for Jamie xx: not only did he bring the beats to the Capitol Hill Block Party, but he also released a mix for Apple Music's Beats 1 featuring tracks from The War on Drugs, The Persuasians, Deadboy, Apparat, The Durutti Column, The Doors, and more. You can listen to it here. J…
Well, that was a sure way to wake up the neighborhood! Kicking off KEXP's 2013 CMJ broadcast was New York's own Bear Ceuse, a band whose pounding drums, searing guitars, and loud, belted vocals definitely woke up the group of caffeinated New Yorkers who gathered at Judson Memorial Church for their …
It’s great to see that excellent, keenly questioning, perennially rebellious, truly inspiring, and high quality reading/viewing/listening materials keep being published and produced in this extremely DIY economy. Forged in the fires of pre-economic collapse in 2007, Oakland, CA-based PM Press is a …
This Friday, KEXP, Seattle Center and No Depression are teaming up to bring you an excellent line up for the first of August's Concerts at the Mural! Take advantage of this unique opportunity to discover your new favorite band or enjoy independent artists you already love for FREE! If that's not en…
There are few better ways to ring in the new year than staying up until 2am dancing incessantly to furious house music. Thankfully for us, John MacLean and Marcus Marr agree with us, and this week's The Juan MacLean show at the Nectar Lounge was a pretty fantastic way to kick off another year of li…
Though he'd been playing a variety instruments and styles for years, Oakland music Luis Vasquez never intended his current project, The Soft Moon, to catch on. A true bedroom project, The Soft Moon was originally meant to be a device of self-exploration, a spelunking of the depths, as it were, of V…
KEXP in-studio performances continue on Day 2 of Bumbershoot with Jagwar Ma. The Sydney psych band may have blown the world away with their 2013 debut Howlin’, but with the first few singles from upcoming album Every Now & Then, it looks like they are bent on maintaining their skyrocket traject…
If we've learned anything from the fact that teen paranormal romance is now a legit genre of modern literature, it's that we love relating to the unknown. Or, more specifically, the undead. Eric Elbogen, a.k.a. Say Hi has been keen to this fact since the summer of 2006, when dropped Say Hi's breakt…
Talk about "a movie script ending": in the brand new music video from Death Cab for Cutie, frontman (and future KEXP guest DJ) Ben Gibbard stars as a film director, shooting an action movie. Watch the brutal slow-motion footage for the track "Black Sun" below. Their forthcoming release Kintsugi hi…
HEALTH's new record Death Magic has a pretty significant lead up to it. After working on a third album for some time, the band got an opportunity to work on the soundtrack for Rockstar's Max Payne 3, which they knocked out of the park in every plausible way. The extra time focused on production and…
It's not easy for bands to pull of a daytime performance in bright sunlight. Most are used to dark clubs and nocturnal crowds, but the warm desert tones of LA's Allah-Las made for a perfect Austin afternoon on the first day of our broadcast this year from Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop during SXSW. Thou…
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…
