“This is my work. This is what I do.” Mitski Miyazaki lays her manifesto out early on in her return trip to the KEXP Live Room with a full band to follow up the solo session she performed shortly after the release of 2016's masterful Puberty 2. A year on the road has only made her sharper, an…
When Finn Andrews first entered the KEXP studios in 2004, he was barely 20 years of age, but his evocative songwriting was already fully-formed. Returning in 2017, The Veils leader is more refined and potent than ever on the Auckland-via-London group's fifth album Total Depravity. Embracing "…
Much was made of Nao's jazz backgroud when she was a buzzy artist in 2015, but the London musician's debut full length, this year's For All We Know (named for a jazz standard) displays a singer with significant funk credentials and forward-thinking, electronic-tinged production. In this kinetic se…
Michael Franti will, without hesitation, say that his 20-plus year career was built on one thing: tenacious optimism. And even if you can't see it in the room, Franti's optimism radiates just as brilliantly through the songs of his new album Soul Rocker as anything else in his catalog. Franti, alo…
There is only one band in the world that would write a song about racing motorcycles with the infant Jesus in heaven and that band is named Diarrhea Planet. The band's third album, Turn to Gold, turns up the volume on both the Nashville sextet's guitar solos and their humor, and on their second tr…
Join KEXP for the 26th Annual Expansions MLK Unity Party and Live Broadcast on Sunday, January 18th! The party will kick off with DJ Supreme La Rock for a Live Broadcast of Sunday Soul, and will continue through Expansions and Beyond with DJs Riz, Brit Hansen, Kid Hops, Sharlese and Alex Ruder. It…
A collection of KEXP premieres, interviews, and selections for the annual Record Store Day event.
Shlohmo is one fearless dude. If there is anyone else left in the room doubting that at this point, I really think they need to come forward if for nothing else than to just have a talk. Last year, Henry Laufer dropped an EP with R&B god Jeremih on his own record label, WEDIDIT, and shared a st…
The kids are coming up from behind - James Murphy called it 12 years ago and not much has changed since then. Seen nowhere stronger than in the realm of dance music, youthful vigor and forward thinking to an increasingly younger audience seems to dominate the scene as the spectrum of influences see…
It's that magical time of year again -- Sufjan Stevens has been releasing and presenting his usual barrage of bizarrely sweet Christmas cheer, and there have been plenty of other excellent holidays-themed releases and performances. For your holiday listening pleasure, we've compiled a list of the b…
Beloved New York dance-punks LCD Soundsystem have announced their first show of 2017: headlining the Forecastle Festival, taking place July 14-16 in Louisville, Kentucky. Also on the bill are Weezer, Odesza, PJ Harvey, Run the Jewels, to name just a few. Founder/frontman James Murphy announced ear…
This is the third album by The Jazz Butcher I've covered in this blog series (see also here and here), and I'm embarrassed to admit I have yet to properly spend time getting acquainted with this long-running English band's deep discography. Something tells me that the next several years will be a g…
In the years I've been doing this series we've talked about Daniel Johnston a couple times, and we've talked about Shimmy Disc many (many, many) times - so isn't it about time we hit both in one post? 1990 was the massively prolific singer-songwriter's first album not to appear under the Stress lab…
Hop Along frontwoman Frances Quinlan's distinctive voice has been compared to everything from a hurricane to sandpaper and everything in between, but what ultimately makes it so magnetic is its emotiveness, it's ability to sound human and stand out when surrounded by the pointed bluster of her band…
A massive lighting rig. Pulsating four-on-the-floor beats. A constant, insistent bass presence in every song. Choruses that, in the moment, seem like they can actually propel the audience to the heights the singer is claming she'll go to. This is not Chvrches, the Glasgow basement project that emer…
For every country music star who seems to pop out of nowhere with a new mega-hit single, too many other talented artists struggle to reach even half the audiences they deserve. It's a sad fact for musicians of all genres, but the ethics of "hard work for little pay" seem particularly true for count…
18 year old Swedish rapper Yung Lean (Jonatan Håstad) may be one of the most polarizing, confusing faces on the independent hip-hop scene of the last few years. Pitchfork hates him. Fader loves him. The rest of us find ourselves somewhere in between, trying to balance all of the bizarre parts of th…
Our third live show of the day from Kex Hostel at Iceland Airwaves was Mammút. This rock band won acclaim with their latest album Komdu til mín svarta systir (Come to Me, My Dark Sister), scoring eight nominations at the 2013 Icelandic Music Awards. Eventually they snagged wins for best album, song…
At 60 years old, Robyn Hitchcock has experienced a longevity that would be the cause for many musicians' envy. He began his career as a member of several small, local London bands until 1976 when he founded the psychedelic folk rock group The Soft Boys. In 1981 (about a year after The Soft Boys bro…
