National Volunteer Week is an opportunity to celebrate the impact of volunteer service. .
Last year's Six Degrees honoree Robyn Hitchcock releases his 21st album this Spring. Check out the first single below, titled "I Want To Tell You About What I Want." In an interview with NPR, Hitchcock explains, "The original title of the song was 'My Vision Of World Empathy.' Either we will event…
We've finally got a release date to announce for the new Run the Jewels! The highly-anticipated RTJ3 hits the internet as a free download on January 13th, with physical copies to follow, same day in North America and January 20th everywhere else. Special guests include Kamasi Washington (who, inci…
Our long-time musician friend, David Bazan, stopped by the KEXP studios the other day to play synth-ethereal songs off his new album, Blanco, which he so Bazanly described before the session as "basically electronic music with sadness." No surprise there! If you know anything about the man you know…
Berlin-trio Moderat, featuring the combined forces of the German electronic projects Apparat and Modeselektor, stopped by KEXP's studio to showcase a few of their new bangers from their 2016 release, III. The "bored-with-current electronic-music-back-in-the-day" musicians put out a quick caveat tha…
Ben Harper has defined the sweet spot between reggae and American folk for over two decades now. It's hard for an artist to survive that long while maintaining relevance and staying true to the original sound that hooked listeners long ago while evolving and while shifting and growing - but after r…
Now in its fifth year, the Treefort Music Fest brings its biggest line-up yet to Boise, Idaho. Over the next five days, over 400 bands will take the stage across multiple venues in downtown Boise, including Built to Spill, Charles Bradley & His Extraordinaires, Youth Lagoon, Thundercat, Thee Oh…
Over the summer, Matt Berninger of The National and Brent Knopf of Ramona Falls/Menomena secretly played an EL VY show at Los Angeles venue Largo as part of Pete Holmes' monthly showcase. Matt's brother, Tom, captured video of the duo performing the track "Need a Friend," which you can watch on th…
Thankfully, Failure never quite lived up to their name. Though in the 90's, they were never really allowed to sit at the cool table of grunge superstars, they found critical praise through their own inventive brand of heavy alt-rock. Record sales, unfortunately, never followed, and five years after…
Dilating their punkish pupils since their debut release Hard Life, Brooklyn’s Big Eyes set their sights on a musically matured sound for their sophomore 2013 album, Almost Famous. Ingrained within the Seattle scene in both sights and sonics, KEXP caught up with singer/songwriter Kait Eldridge to d…
As we reported last month, crowd-surfer extraordinaire Mac DeMarco will release a new EP this fall titled (appropriately) Another One. Today, he shares the mini-album's first track "The Way You'd Love Her," which you can stream below. DeMarco also announced more tour dates, including a Thursday, O…
Considering the early 80's were the heyday of The Dream Syndicate, you're forgiven if, like the song says, you're "just trying to remember the days of wine and roses". As leaders of the so-called Paisley Underground, the LA band carried the sounds of the previous decade, particularly of The Velvet …
Shabazz Palaces sound like no one else. Whether you call it "sci-fi", "way-out", "weirdo" or even "planetarium" rap, the Seattle duo's music might as well be in outer space considering how far off they sound from their contemporaries. But it's not like they don't want anyone else to follow. In its …
For those lamenting beloved NYC band The Walkmen's indefinite hiatus, rejoice in the band's bassist Peter Matthew Bauer's solo album, Liberation!. Don't be offended by the title, it's not an enthusiastic goodbye to the band Bauer has dedicated 13 years of his life to. The album marks an opportune m…
We've packed the house at Kex Hostel during our broadcasts during Iceland Airwaves over the last few years, but no session was filled with as many fervent Icelandic fans as the performance by Emilíana Torrini. The Iceland native (her father is Italian, if you're wondering about her name) grew up in…
Okay, not "exactly" music news, but it's just been announced that none other than Stephen Colbert will take over for David Letterman as the host of CBS' The Late Show in 2015! Letterman announced his retirement earlier this month with a performance from Joseph Arthur, accompanied by R.E.M.'s Mike …
We were already honored to have legendary musician John Doe of punk pioneers X joining us in the KEXP studio, so you can't imagine our surprise when he walked in with the also-legendary Mike McCready of Pearl Jam. Doe's musical partner Exene Cervenka caught a cold during the Seattle stop for the ba…
