There are so many excellent Summer music festivals in the Pacific Northwest, it’s hard to know where to invest your time and money. West Seattle Summerfest, July 8-10, is absolutely not one to miss. Besides being completely FREE, it has the best local music lineup you’re likely to find- Seattle fa…
Ontario electronic duo Junior Boys share a clip for the track "No One's Business," off their latest Big Black Coat. The video, directed by Simon Mercer, features time-lapse footage of a man getting ready to perform in his basement. (No, not like in a Silence of the Lambs kinda way.) Watch below, a…
Brooklyn group Yeasayer are an act that cares about the details. From their pleas to “please watch at the 4k setting” on one of their music video’s to the collage of sounds that was their 2016 release, Amen and Goodbye, the group certainly has a knack for thinking about the little things other band…
Unknown Mortal Orchestra has not slowed down since releasing the spectacular 2015 album, Multi-Love. The band has been on an ambitious world tour since the release of the album, and solved many people’s first world problem of a lack of new UMO music last week by releasing a new single. Aptly title…
Canadian indie legends Metric have undoubtedly "made it." They're at the glorious stage in a career where they have the commercial success to justify any off-kilter choice they make, while still being independent enough that they have the freedom to make those off-kilter choices without any corpora…
“I got knocked down, but I’ll get up.” That’s how School of Seven Bells’ Alejandra Deheza said goodbye to bandmate Benjamin Curtis a little more than two years ago. The Joey Ramone cover was recorded from Benjamin Curtis’s hospital room in late 2013. After a long battle with T-cell Lymphoblastic Ly…
Local lad Will Toledo -- better known to KEXP listeners as Car Seat Headrest -- shares a new video today for the track "Vincent" off the upcoming Matador Records release Teens of Denial, out this Spring (not to be confused with the previous release, Teens of Style). As the YouTube caption states: …
Saturday wrapped up another year of All Tomorrow's Parties Iceland, hosted in Keflavík at Atlantic Studios. Younghusband played their second and original time slot on the main stage. Ought from Canada (who are on the same label as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, who played the day before), and HAM, wh…
Aw man, not again! On Friday night, after The Replacements' performance at Primavera Porto in Barcelona, Spain, frontman Paul Westerberg said it would be the last time they'd play together. (The band first formed in 1979, and first broke up in 1991, before their 2012 reunion.) Westerberg told the …
Happy 2015! As always at the beginning of a new year there's been a lot of looking back at the year that just passed, but in this series I tend to cast my glance a bit farther back. So let's take a trip to 1984, and a little straight edge hardcore band from Boston called D.Y.S. I'm actually pretty …
"There are some people in tinsel costumes around me... uh... that's what's happening." When Helado Negro is asked to describe his "bandmates" in the studio, that's how he does it, smirking with just enough hesitation to leave a sense of intrigue. On his latest album, Double Youth, the artist someti…
Earlier this month, KEXP returned to the magical space of the Bunny Glade during Pickathon 2014 to capture intimate acoustic sessions in this wooded oasis. Each of the 17 exclusive performances were special, but we couldn't have asked for a better way to end our final day than with the charming sla…
Don't expect to take the title of the second solo album by Kevin Morby literally. Still Life was written during a particularly busy time in his life, which included touring with two bands -- Woods (his former band) and The Babies (his project with Vivian Girls' Cassie Ramone) -- and switching coast…
It's nice to pick up a relatively obscure album from the KEXP stacks and discover that it's found a bit of new life in this century. It's not exactly a mysterious discovery along the lines of Light in the Attic's release of L'amour (though I will be looking for a vintage copy of that gem next time …
It’s been quite a year for Matthew Hemerlein. The Los Angeles-based musician operating, under the name Lo-Fang, has been piecing together his debut record Blue Film since 2009. First as a mixtape, now as a fully rendered personal work, the collection of songs seen here is awe-inspiring and striking…
It's been a few years since Black Joe Lewis has visited the KEXP studios, and during that time, the Austin, TX musician has changed his line-up and dropped "the Honeybears" from the band name. "We never liked the name," Lewis explained to DJ Shannon. "We booked a couple of gigs when we first starte…
"I know everyone here by name", Ólafur Arnalds said during his first in-studio performance at KEXP. It was in fact the fifth time the Icelandic composer and performance has recorded with us, though previously it had been within his own apartment in Reykjavik (in both 2010 and 2011), live from KEX H…
For the final night of Decibel Festival 2013, Sunday September 29, I headed to the Crocodile for the Timetable Records showcase, featuring Nosaj Thing, with Lorn, Teebs, and D Tiberio. Aside from Nosaj Thing—a veteran of Decibel Festival I'd seen before — I was unfamiliar with the lineup and unsure…
Every Saturday evening, I look forward to playing you some of my favorite songs. I remember discovering our Northwest music scene: I was lucky enough to stumble on a host opening on the local show at my college station, KGRG FM. I trained with the original hosts of the show a couple of times, and t…
Though named for a popular British toy company, Chad Valley is more than just a plaything Oxford, UK's Hugo Manuel. Also the frontman for the group Jonquil, Manuel has turned a couple of lo-fi solo EPs into a fully realized project of lush, summery synth-pop. Like Jonquil, Chad Valley features Manu…
