With a rare chunk of time to spare between great acts at Bumbershoot, a stop at the Sub Pop installation was in order. A short walk down the hill from KEXP to the International Fountain Pavillion to check out the installation and pop-up shop from the legendary Seattle label. Only up for the weekend…
I am learning so much today! For starters, I've found out about Rank and File, a band I was previously unaware of. They're often described as a founding band of the country-punk hybrid cowpunk genre, but with my 2017 ears they sound more like "cow-new-wave" or "cow-'80s-college-rock" - but I see ho…
Get ready for some two-fers on The Midday Show on KEXP: the new Spoon album is finally here! KEXP Music Director Don Yates notes, the "Austin band's ninth album finds them tweaking their sound with more prominent dance beats, electronic textures and adventurous sonic touches, while still providing …
New Beck songs! Well, new-ish. Back in 2011, Beck contributed two original pieces for the film soundtrack to D.J. Caruso’s thriller, I Am Number Four. Over the weekend, Caruso shared two of those songs online, which you can stream below. No definite news on the long-awaited follow-up to 2014's Mor…
A native of Red Bluff, California, Margaret Glaspy moved across the country to Boston, where she cut her teeth with master classes at Berklee (regardless of whether or not she was a student at the time) and local gigs. A few years – and one set of studio sessions redoing her original, iPad-recorded…
Slippery as they are, Australian seven piece King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard managed to record six albums before before finally squeezing into the KEXP live room. Granted, it's only been three years since their debut, but as the Melbourne band are about to release their seventh (and for the fi…
Despite keeping busy with Dinosaur Jr and Sebadoh, Lou Barlow managed to find time to record a new solo album. The latest, Brace the Wave, hits stores September 4th via Joyful Noise. In a press release, Barlow explains, "Having moved back to Massachusetts (after 17 years in Los Angeles), I recorde…
Twenty two years is a long time to wait for a group's second album, but The Juliana Hatfield Three have not missed a beat on the new songs from their recently released, Whatever, My Love. Unlike the vast majority of '90s bands currently slugging it out on the road, this trio does not have to rely o…
Yesterday, Grimes unearthed a previously unreleased track that she recorded in 2009 with Devon Welsh of Majical Cloudz. At the time, the pair were on bad terms with their obese cat, Voignamir, who weighed somewhere between 20-30 pounds. His dieting angst inspired this song, which you can stream on…
With their latest album, Shiver & Shake, local trio My Goodness shrug off earlier comparisons to the White Stripes and The Black Keys with their dynamic new songs. During their recent in-studio performance at KEXP, frontman Joel Schneider explained to DJ Cheryl Waters that they were really able…
Originally, he didn't want to do it, but Joseph Arthur was eventually convinced to record Lou, a full album of songs by his friend and mentor, the late Lou Reed. Reluctant to turn the modern legend's memory into "an opportunity", Joseph Arthur approached the songs cautiously, simply, and unplugged …
atTentIoN, huManS of eArtH. Hightek Lowlives bring greetings and great sounds from the distant future. The Seattle duo of Otieno Terry and Kjell Nelson toss everything you know about R&B, beat-making, hip-hop and rap, throw it into a time-machine, and send it careening like a bizarre blast from…
It would be great to construct this write-up as a complete palindrome, but probably only Tacocat could pull that off! Instead, let it suffice that this Seattle four-piece is hella charming — from the new ice cream flavor coming out under their name all the way down to their latest album title, NVM,…
As major labels continue to exist behind the times, artists and labels with little capital and lesser reputations are producing some of the most innovative, interesting, and inspiring music. Whether it’s creating a new niche in digital technology or looking to once obsolete formats, Agitated Atmosp…
A lot has been said of how the latest album from Jersey quintet Real Estate is "their most mature to date," but when the boys showed up to their in-studio session carrying a large framed poster of Bob Marley, and then began sound-checking with Nirvana's "Come As You Are," it was apparent they're th…
A Child's Adventure appears almost exactly in the middle of Marianne Faithfull's long and varied discography, which itself is a product of her challenging and fascinating life. The late '60s and '70s appear to have been a particularly hard time for Faithfull, but in 1979 she released Broken English…
Brooklyn-based (formerly San Francisco) shoegaze band Weekend came into the picture at the turn of the decade with Sports, a strong introductory statement that could have seen the band go in plenty of different directions in the future. But in the form of Jinx, their sophomore step mixes dense text…
The debut album, I Never Meant It To Be Like This, from Seattle's Cumulus has been a long time coming. After establishing themselves in the local music scene playing alongside fellow Northwest artists like Wild Flag, Gold Leaves and Pickwick, honing their sound and piquing fan interest, the trio la…
Few band names are as apt as The Cave Singers. Not quite a folk band and definitely not your typical indie rock band, The Cave Singers seem to have hatched their sound in seclusion, as if alone amid darkness and firelight. Their songs are rustic in style but not necessarily in execution, airy but a…
What a bill! If you were at Crocodile Tuesday night, you sure got your 15 dollars worth. Swedish electro-pop duo Niki & The Dove blew our minds (as usual) with their soundscape of 80s pop glory, but luckily for those that arrived early, both openers played strong sets that were met with much ac…
