The Los Angeles band, Las Cafeteras, named themselves after a community space in El Sereno, L.A. where group members met one another and started to learn and play Son Jarocho music together, influenced by regional Mexican folk music. The band feminized the name to honor women, they note. Modern day…
Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings recorded one last album before Jones passed away due to pancreatic cancer last year. Entitled Soul Of A Woman, the album will be released November 17. Today the Dap-Kings shared the track "Call on God," a song Jones wrote in the '70s for E.I. Fields' Gospel Wonders an…
Nate Sloan (Vox Media's Switched On Pop) discusses how streaming has impacted song length and formats, Chris Molanphy (Hit Parade Podcast, Slate) talks about how musicians are gaming the billboard charts in the streaming era through "bundling." We explore the differences between Seattle and LA’s mu…
KEXP is celebrating our 50th anniversary this year, and we're looking back at the last half-century of music. Each week in 2022, KEXP pays homage to a different year, and our writers are commemorating a song from that year that resonates with them. This week, KEXP's Jasmine Albertson looks back at …
Nashville band Diarrhea Planet get this week's gold star with their third LP, Turn To Gold. KEXP Music Director Don Yates notes the album "features a bigger, more polished sound for their hook-filled blend of punkish power-pop and epic hard rock, along with crisper, more sophisticated songs with mo…
Midday Show host Cheryl Waters presents the latest Music That Matters podcast featuring a mix of new songs from Mono Town, Pixies, Summer Aviation and more! 1. Grizzly Bear - Listen and Wait 2. The Besnard Lakes - People of the Sticks 3. Holograms - Meditations 4. Mono Town - Jackie O 5. Ásgeir -…
After leaving your rock band and abandoning your faith, you're bound to come back with some kind of statement or not come back at all. Mikko Joensuu chose the former path, creating an ambitious trilogy of albums with songs that often live in spiritual, transcendent moments. Performing with a…
Caitlin De Marrais, Kaia Fischer, and William Kuehn originally stepped away from the influential emo outlet Rainer Maria in 2006, but fate led to their return nearly a decade later, first as a performing band, then as a recording one. S/T, their first record in a decade, is full of the passionate …
Considering the members' other projects, Filthy Friends' collective resume is completely stacked - having Corin Tucker, Peter Buck, and Scott McCaughey in your ranks will do that - but it's remarkable how loose and low-stakes this performance of ripping guitars and pounding drums so…
The Kyiv folk quartet DakhaBrakha created their latest album Шлях (English: The Road) as a tribute to their Motherland, and in this vital session, it's easy to hear the multitude of voices both figurative and literal that make up a stirring snapshot of a people pushing forward during a diffic…
Xenia Rubinos' evocative, electrifying voice is a singular one to say the least, and in her sophomore album, this year's Black Terry Cat, she has a set of songs that have just as broad of a musical spectrum. Painting with a hard-to-categorize set of sounds drawing from R&B to punk, Rubinos' re…
The music of Explosions in the Sky has always lived up to the expectations set by the band's evocative name, and on their seventh studio album, The Wilderness, the Austin, Texas outfit continues to create singular, cathartic, and often breathtaking instrumental compositions. Joining host Tro…
Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Today’s song, featured on the Midd…
Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unrealeased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJ’s think you should hear. Today’s song, featured on the Mo…
Take it from the crackpot behind the annual Big Gay Podcast and the 4AD 4VR blowout—YOU make it incredibly fun to program themed programs and podcasts on KEXP. Did you hear John’s hour-long set of songs about rain on Wednesday? My favorite part was your emails pouring into the DJ booth. They teemed…
At nearly every day of any festival, there's an artist who's set time becomes a casualty to equipment changeover delays, and on Friday, that artist was Phosphorescent. But maybe it was a blessing in disguise, because those who waited through the nearly 20-minute delay at Sasquatch were rewarded wit…
The Mexico City producer and his band perform four songs live from Panoram Studios.
By Annette Barlow
By Jason Anderson