"We're gonna play 'til they kick us out." Nobunny spoke to the crowd at El Corazon Saturday night, clad in a bunny mask and black briefs with a white poof tail. "Nevermind, they already locked the doors. None of us are getting out alive. This is it. Welcome to Hell, this goes on for your life." If …
The phrase "music is a universal language" is sometimes overused, but is perfectly fitting when it comes to Joe Driscoll & Sekou Kouyate. New York native Driscoll and Guinea-born Kouyate met at a music festival in Marseilles, France and instantly clicked. Despite the enormous language barrier -…
It's with terrible sadness that KEXP reports Darius Minwalla, longtime drummer for local band The Posies, passed away yesterday, May 21st, in his home in Vancouver, BC. Cause of death has yet to be determined. Minwalla joined the power-pop quartet in 2001, appearing on their 2005 comeback album Eve…
THUMPERS — not only is the name itself indicative of their sound, but the preferred spelling is all in caps. "Every time people actually do it, I feel a bit bad", confessed John Hamson Jr., one of the band's two founders, in a recent interview with KEXP. But Hamson and his cohort Marcus Pepperell m…
You're not alone if the crummy weather this season makes you wish it were a different time of year. It's what makes sharing today's exclusive video premiere even more special. For "Summer Is Almost Gone", Icelandic singer-songwriter Snorri Helgason ventures to New York City on a hot summer day, wal…
If composers like Mozart and Tchaikovsky were born today, would we recognize their work? Would they create the same kind of heady and emotive symphonies and concertos as they did in the past? Or would the history of rock and electronica bend them in a new direction? Maybe only time will tell if we'…
Bands go through changes – name changes, member changes, sound transformations, covers. One of those bands that has recently changed names, members, and sound, but has survived, is Philadelphia’s Bleeding Rainbow. Starting as a duo of sludge-infused indie pop back in 2009, the band then known as Re…
The latest album from Malian songwriter and guitarist Sidi Touré, released in the US by Thrill Jockey, is called Koïma, named for a dune near his home city of Gao. "Koïma" can be translated to mean "go hear", and the dune, which sits at the edge of the Niger River, is said to be a sacred meeting p…
When I first ever heard of Steve Albini's provocatively-named band between Big Black and Shellac (after they'd ceased operations) I was already a fan of his, so I just kinda rolled my eyes and thought "ah, there goes ol' Steve again, ruffling feathers and pushing buttons." Being a fairly sheltered …
It goes without saying that Elliott Smith cannot be replaced. He was a one of a kind talent, a songwriter whose gift for melody often served as the vessel for his often harrowing narratives and disclosures. In the wake of his tragic death at 34, his reputation for intimately capturing deathly stark…
First there was the Rat Pack, then the Brat Pack, and now... the Mac Pack? The uniforms may have changed – from suits to cardigans to oversized t-shirts and backwards-facing baseball caps – but the life-is-to-be-lived attitude of today's scene makers hasn't. Singer-songwriter Mac DeMarco embodies t…
It was Lucius co-lead singer's Holly Laessig's birthday on Sunday, as her partner in crime Jess Wolfe so enthusiastically pointed out, and what better present than to have a sizeable crowd of adoring fans at Sasquatch sing to you? That's what happened, of course, but in addition to being a kind ges…
And then every once in a while you find a record that garners unfettered adoration from seemingly all corners. Going through the comments on Savage Republic's 4th LP (please don't make me type the title again), I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop - for someone to cry "overrated" or "pretentio…
The crowd at Kex Hostel is abuzz with excitement in anticipation of the triumphant return of Icelandic indie-rock band SUÐ (appropriately, Icelandic for “Buzz”). The band originally formed in the late 90’s, releasing only one album, 1999’s Hugsunarvélin, and played together until 2003. After reconn…
We can't say the song title on the air, but we sure can on the KEXP Blog! So, check out the clip for the track "Shithole" from Toronto stand-outs Weaves. Director Trevor Blumas fixes his lens on frontwoman Jasmyn Burke. In a press release, Burke says, "We shot this video on a hot Summers day with …
Seattle's Lemolo specializes in the kind of dark, introspective, and haunting music that fit so well in the old live performance space at KEXP's Dexter studio (and will surely fit in the new one as well!), which is perhaps one reason we keep asking them back. Ahead of the release of their 2015 albu…
"Let's get heavy," Other Lives frontman Jesse Tabish jokes before launching into the principle dichotomies behind the creation of their latest release, Rituals. But whether they're conflating old and new styles or humanity's primal nature and our technologically isolating modern world, the surprisi…
Sunday night was a great one for Seattleites pretty much every kind. The Seahawks’ final playoffs game against the Forty-Niners stayed tight throughout, but in the end, the Hawks emerged victorious and everyone in Seattle jumping and shouting in the streets. But perhaps the luckiest of the these ma…
It’s great to see that excellent, keenly questioning, perennially rebellious, truly inspiring, and high quality reading/viewing/listening materials keep being published and produced in this extremely DIY economy. Forged in the fires of pre-economic collapse in 2007, Oakland, CA-based PM Press is a …
