Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings are recent legends and have become one of KEXP's core artists. The band, and the Daptones label that it represents, were the main force behind the soul funk revival of the last fifteen years, the stylistic rebirth that bands ranging from The Alabama Shakes to The Bu…
The 2017 Mercury Prize shortlist was announced today. Nominees include alt-J's Relaxer (who previously won the award in 2012 for An Awesome Wave), Glass Animals' How to Be a Human Being, Sampha's Process, Kate Tempest's Let Them Eat Chaos, and The xx's I See You. The prize celebrates the best Briti…
Get ready of an alt-country battle royale when local musicians take on the songs of Uncle Tupelo vs. The Jayhawks on Thursday, January 30th at the Tractor Tavern! Don Slack of KEXP's Swingin' Doors will referee the rockin' ruckus, but really, everyone wins because all proceeds from this event go to…
With a list of influences that including Dire Straits, Napalm Death, Beat Happening and Ol' Dirty Bastard, it's not an easy task to define the straightforward and honest sound of indie rock four-piece Parquet Courts. Their clean and simple guitars accompanied with in-your-face and incredibly smart …
Well, that was a sure way to wake up the neighborhood! Kicking off KEXP's 2013 CMJ broadcast was New York's own Bear Ceuse, a band whose pounding drums, searing guitars, and loud, belted vocals definitely woke up the group of caffeinated New Yorkers who gathered at Judson Memorial Church for their …
Middle kids, in general, struggle for attention. Middle Kids (the band), on the other hand, have had little trouble getting noticed during their short career. The Sydney trio released their first single, the Ryan Adams-esque “Edge of Town," before they had even played a show. Shortly thereafter, po…
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…
This year is Wilco's twentieth anniversary, but the posit of Wilco merely being a band for two decades is a somewhat reductive statement – across their career, they've covered as much musical ground (and employed as many personnel) as three or four bands. They started out as alt-country lifers tryi…
The guy from The Long Winters, and the guy from The Decemberists... when you put it like that, it's not exactly the most attractive double-bill during an already-cold, dark season in the Pacific Northwest. Were Coldplay, Snow Patrol, or Iceage not available? They should have billed it "The Seasonal…
Among the many great new releases out this week is our own annual benefit collection, Live at KEXP Volume Nine. Featuring 18 stellar tracks culled from the over 500 amazing live sessions we recorded in the past year, Volume Nine contains some serious heavy hitters like Macklemore & Ryan Lewis a…
Ohio alt-country singer-songwriter Jessica Lea Mayfield has contributed a holiday song to Amazon's Indie for the Holidays playlist. Taking on the 1966 anti-Christmas Christmas song by Loretta Lynn "To Heck With Ole Santa Claus," Mayfield turns the spirited original into a despondent slow-burner. S…
And so we witnessed another amazing music festival! This time it was the 4th annual Macefield Music Festival that took place this weekend across Conor Byrne, Tractor Tavern, The Sunset Tavern, and the charmingly bricked streets of Ballard Ave. Macefield Music Festival was named after Edith Macefiel…
It’s a rare opportunity to see a band as hyped as Whitney at a venue as intimate as the Sunset Tavern. Or as frontman Julien Ehrlich noted with an off-the-cuff affect he deploys for most his on stage thoughts, “This show’s been sold out a long time.” No surprise there. With the June release of thei…
Talk about a storied past. The Jayhawks rose from the fertile era of Twin Cities rock that also produced such contemporaries as The Replacements, Hüsker Dü, Soul Asylum and Prince. Though they often get tagged as "country rock revivalists" or "alt-country icons", the band's sound and personnel shif…
Over the last eight years, alt-country band The Maldives have become one of the Northwest's most celebrated and liked bands. Their live shows are joyful occasions that bring the crowd together, as all good concerts do, with swagger, soul, and hearts-on-sleeves abandon. The Ballard-based band stop…
Thankfully, Failure never quite lived up to their name. Though in the 90's, they were never really allowed to sit at the cool table of grunge superstars, they found critical praise through their own inventive brand of heavy alt-rock. Record sales, unfortunately, never followed, and five years after…
"There are so many mountains in the world, but not all of them are on the top 10 list... but if you stand on top of one, you feel like you're on the highest point on earth." This is the concept behind super-duo Minor Alps. Multi-talented musicians Matthew Caws of Nada Surf and Juliana Hatfield do j…
Opening our final day of the KEXP broadcast live from KEX Hostel at Iceland Airwaves is singer-songwriter John Grant. Though he is currently based in Iceland, he is one of only two American acts featured on this year's broadcast. Grant first gained notoriety as the lead singer of Denver-based shoeg…
Before most of the festival’s attendees have even arrived at Seattle Center, KEXP’s Bumbershoot was already underway. Setting a high bar right from the get-go, gospel legends Blind Boys of Alabama opened the festival with an intimate set at KEXP's Secret Stage. From their humble beginnings nearly 8…
"Seriously? Another song?" Kristin Hersh, frontwoman for Throwing Muses, teased KEXP's DJ El Toro (a.k.a. Kurt Reighley) in mock-exasperation during their in-studio session, "We are so old, Kurt -- why are you doing this?" The veteran alt-rock legends are doing it for their latest release, Purgator…
