After an elaborate ad campaign for Arcade Fire's new single "Creature Comfort" that included a fictitious cereal ad for Creature Comfort Cereal and then placing said cereal boxes around Dublin for a game of Find The Cereal and Get Into the Afterparty, they finally released the actual song along wit…
Among the Polish artists we discovered during the recordings KEXP captured while at the OFF Festival in Katowice, Poland, perhaps none better exemplifies the country's musical diversity as Olo Walicki. The Gdansk-born composer, performer and bass player has recorded many albums of his own throughou…
Even without all Black Flag related nonsense that’s been happening on and off for two years, Keith Morris has recently enjoyed a compelling and visceral return to the spotlight. He hosted his own punk station on the new Grand Theft Auto game and has returned to present tense conversation for all th…
Even for a band that’s made a career out of reinterpreting styles from the 50s, 60s, 70s, and beyond, Dr. Dog’s latest release, Psychedelic Swamp, (ANTI- Records), is more meta you might think. The album is a rehashing of their first unreleased demo, originally recorded in 2000, and as such, it mak…
For a moment there, it looked like The National's headlining set at Sasquatch – one of the band's biggest shows to date – was going to be underwhelming. For the first twenty minutes, the band felt too mellow, and frontman Matt Berninger, disinterested. And then, after "Don't Swallow The Cap", a swi…
"Oh London moon, help me stumble home, help me lose myself along the way." So begins the return of Broken Bells, the all-too-perfect team up between now legendary producer Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) and the genius songwriter who gave us the Shins, James Mercer. After The Disco is the soundtrack to…
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. Using inspirational songs during sports competitions helps pump up and motivate both athletes and fans. Music plays a pa…
Despite the innumerable sources of praise and worship from every corner of the earth, David Bowie somehow finds a way to face a sort of misrepresentation in the modern world, where every new album is slated as a comeback. Each forthcoming effort from the aging rock legend has some sort of Lazarus e…
Hunter Hunt-Hendrix cannot catch a break. With his work as Liturgy, he has crafted some of the most vivacious, jarring metal records we've heard in recent years. Take 2011's Aesthetica as an example. The record operates between quiet and loud like little else on the market. Its use of black metal t…
Leave it to a Welsh indie pop band to take a perfectly innocent game invented by beloved children's author A.A. Milne for his son and turn it into a band name with unpleasantly coprological overtones. (The most unpleasant part: "The Pooh Sticks" works as both a plural noun and a sentence. Ew.) In c…
Through years of hard work and countless projects, producer Kurt Feldman has made a name for himself as one of the greatest auteurs of the 80s who was also born in the 80s. Earlier this year, Feldman brought this knack for timeless synth pop to Kristin Welchez for her debut as Kristin Kontrol. Else…
If you call yourself an Arcade Fire fan and have seen the band at least once in the live setting, there's a good chance that you need absolutely no introduction to Will Butler. When Arcade Fire skyrocketed to the moon amongst the Reflektor hype of 2013, it was clear that the one facet of their musi…
Across the last three years, Project Pabst has quietly become one of the more reliably interesting festivals in the Pacific Northwest, which is no small feat considering its large-scale competition to the north of its site in Portland, Oregon. It's essentially the Room on Fire of Northwestern music…
"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…
Listening to In A Dream, the new LP from DFA powerhouse The Juan MacLean, we're reminded that it's been a long five years since John MacLean dropped his last proper record, The Future Will Come, back in 2009. That fantastic dance record was laden with Human League-esque back and forth narration bet…
So far, it's been a total scorcher this summer, the weather giving outdoor enthusiasts and festival-goers alike strong reasons for enjoying the cloudless skies. Whether it be hiking, biking, or touring the amazing music scene, Seattle, to say the least, is a great place to pass time underneath the …
Twenty years of Capitol Hill Block Party magic is bound to bring some surprises, and some of 2016's latest additions made for some of the best events of the day. New Jersey producer and DJ Clams Casino was announced as part of the bill only about a week before the action started on Friday. Meanwhil…
