If you were listening to The Morning Show on KEXP this morning, you heard DJ John Richards play the new LCD Soundsystem. As reported yesterday, two songs debuted last night -- "Call the Police" and "American Dream" -- both available now in digital format, and streaming below. No definite news on t…
A year after his debut album release, it is no doubt that Benjamin Booker is a rockstar. He's played the festival main stages, toured across the country, and even guitar dueled with Jack White. It's deserved notoriety for a man who makes such a unique blend of punk, rock, blues and folk. And even w…
The fact that Turn Blue, the eighth album by The Black Keys, is full of songs about being hurt by a woman shouldn't be all that surprising. Although they, sonically speaking, haven't been a dirty, traditionalist-leaning blues band in a few years now, they remain one at heart, which is why Dan Auerb…
"I heard today was the first nice day in quite a while, right?" As his band Cayucas starts in on another track of bright, warm, surf pop gold, he banters with a Seattle winter crowd who got to go out in the sun in early March - a near miraculous event by any account. "Coincidence? I don't think so,…
Vitamin D and Supreme La Rock join Larry Mizell Jr. to revisit 1984, a year so foundational in hip-hop history that we couldn’t focus on just one artist.
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Each Tuesday for the next two months, KEXP will present recordings we captured during the OFF Festival in Katowice, Poland. Our excursion there in the hot days of August - made possible by the festival and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute's Don’t Panic! We’re from Poland! initiative - introduced us to…
Now that they've played a number of shows on their much-publicized reunion trek, it's fair to judge whether or not the Outkast festival tour is merely a opportunistic cash grab or an enthusiastic celebration of the Atlanta duo's massive legacy (during which they will inevitably get real paid). At f…
It's been five years since Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds have toured America, and in the unique and never-predictable story of Nick Cave, five years is a long time. After the release of 2008's Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, Nick has authored the screenplay for a major motion picture, published his second nove…
It’s Friday again so it’s time for Friday on My Mind, our weekly blog post we look at videos centered around one common theme. This is a collaborative effort between KEXP and King 5 News. With a sound more accessible than, but derived from metal and punk, grunge took the world by storm during the e…
Where would we be without Wikipedia? And by we I mean both the human race and people who write blog posts as quickly as possible about esoteric subjects. If I were trying to write this series without Wikipedia, most of my information would come from the comments written by the DJs themselves, some …
Johnny Jewel makes music that calls upon the venue of cinema so regularly, that when he actually creates something meant to go along with film, it almost seems more meta than the imaginary films he's themed in other projects. Likewise, the whole of the Italians Do It Better catalog exists in this s…
Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unrealeased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJ’s think you should hear. Today’s song, featured on the Af…
"It's so fuckin' party you will die." That was The Avalanches self-endorsement of Wildflower from back in January 2007. It had been a long wait for a new Avalanches record (seven years), but the boys were getting it together. They just needed nine more to make it perfect. Back in 2000, the Australi…
You'll wish you could say you were there. It was just one of those shows that all in attendance knew they were blessed by some kind of angelic beings to attend, as HÆLOS played for a respectably sized, though not packed, crowd at The Sunset Tavern last week. The UK trio decided to advance their for…
In Boise, there's a club you want to belong to. They meet in the thawing Spring days of March, huddled in nightclubs, living rooms, pop-up venues, outdoor stages, and anywhere downtown where there are great bands to be heard. It's a club that loves music and the all of the arts, celebrates the Paci…
