Topping this week's list of new releases is the third album by Chicago band Smith Westerns. While the band's 2011 release, Dye It Blonde, drew tons of comparisons (and a tiny bit of flak) for its fuzzy glam nods to Nuggets-era gems, their new release finds the band aiming for what our Music Directo…
A review of Fauna Shade's single "Marzipan" described their sound as "Floydian... zapping electronic wiggles." This simultaneously whimsical yet vague description fits the band perfectly: their sound bounces through all the psychedelic subgenres, with droning stoner fuzz meeting some of Tame Impala…
Starbucks, STG, and KEXP collaborate once again to bring you the next installment in their Little Big Show series. I can't believe we are already on #13! Every show in this series does the same thing, each time with a different beneficiary. 100% of tickets sales benefit a Seattle area organization …
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…
What is Iron and Wine anyway? A man? A band? A concept? A sound? For the past decade, Sam Beam has used his stage name to mean all of those things. The Southeastern raised songwriter first caught people's attention in the Northwest, actually, through a demo featured in Yeti Magazine and followed by…
With a bright blue mantra and neon promise to boot, Cut Copy return this year with their fourth LP Free Your Mind. Dan Whitford and the gang don't seem to be slowing down much in their second decade together. Zonoscope, the band's 2011 award-winning classic, took the band's one of a kind combinatio…
Yes, yes, we're all excited that the Postal Service is playing tonight at Key Arena. But did you know that long before the Postal Service there was a band from Chicago called The Service? Neither did I until just now, but based on Trouser Press's description, this sounds like an '80s college radio …
As if the music was reflecting off the bicycles, Gliss' afternoon set at during our SXSW broadcast was a shimmering cooldown after Jovanotti threw a vibrant Italian party in Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop. As the group ran through a set of tunes from their latest LP, this year's Langsome Dans, frontwoma…
Suuns are riding high this year following the release of their second full-length Images Du Futur, and when they showed up to play at KEXP's broadcast in Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop at SXSW the crowd got to see the band burn with confidence through a set of powerful, propulsive post-rock. Suuns alwa…
What's old is new in Seattle. It has been that way for a while, since before even the grizzled-beyond-their-youth folkies made country rock a "thing" in Ballard during the last half-decade. But now, in hepper neighborhoods like Capitol Hill, organ is the new banjo as Western psychedelia of the late…
Aaron Beam, bassist for Portland’s Red Fang, once told me that he believed the long-standing punk-versus-metal dichotomy died when Metallica’s 1984 sophomore album Ride the Lightning came out. I believe he is correct, and the fact that Oakland, California’s Neurosis formed in 1985 only provides mor…
This Friday, Scottish band Belle and Sebastian are releasing the first EP in a series of three that they're calling How To Solve Our Human Problems. Today the band has shared a video for the previously released single "I'll Be Your Pilot" via TIDAL. Frontman Stuart Murdoch explained in an intervie…
Wow, what an unbelievable end to a great day of live music. Day one of the Airwaves broadcast live from Kex Hostel closed with a bang as we welcomed Iceland’s favorite new live act Hatari. Icelandic for "Hater," Hatari was formed by Klemens Hannigan, Matthías Tryggvi Haraldson, and Einar Stéfansson…
KEXP premiered an album stream of the latest from Portland band Radiation City last week, and it's now in stores. KEXP Music Director Don Yates notes their latest, "features a more synth-driven sound for their eclectic dream-pop, combining bright synths and glittering guitars with funk-inflected rh…
“We carry it now as a badge of honor,” says Miguel Ramirez, percussionist of Los Angeles group La Santa Cecilia, “to say that we are immigrants or children of immigrants.” After the band had stopped by KEXP a few months earlier to perform live I reached out over the phone so we could talk a bit mor…
Ten Commandos, a Seattle punk supergroup, have released their debut single "Staring Down the Dust." Members of the band include Pearl Jam's Matt Cameron, Queens of the Stone Age collaborator Allain Johannes, and Ben Shepherd of Soundgarden. The song features guest vocals from Screaming Tree's Mark…
Power duo Broken Bells, the project of Grammy-Award-winning producer Danger Mouse and James Mercer of The Shins, returns with a surprise single. Stream the non-album track "It's That Talk Again" below, released in promotion of the band's forthcoming concert film, Broken Bells: Live At The Orpheum,…
Temperatures and new releases are dropping this month, including the latest (and first in twelve years) from reunited UK band The Libertines. KEXP Music Director Don Yates says the album "finds them in fine form with their songwriting skills intact. More reflective, mature and diverse than their pr…
Multi-instrumental maestro Jacco Gardner brightens up the KEXP live room with a selection of highlights from his newly released Hypnophobia LP. From the opening keys of the self-titled track to the closing vocal hum of "Find Yourself", Jacco and his talented backing band amalgamate the perfect mixt…
