John Richards

Metric will be in Seattle at the Moore on October 12th! www.ilovemetric.com “Justin captured rare studio footage of the recording of ‘Doomscroller’ and we used it like a visual anchor, as evocative places outside the room keep creeping in,” Metric’s Emily Haines said in a statement about the band’s new 10-minute video, “These traces of life on earth that appear and disappear throughout the song subtly mirror the shifting moods of the music.” See it here: youtu.be

Wild Pink will be at Neumos on Tuesday, May 24th. That's this coming Tuesday and you can find tickets here: www.neumos.com --------- Frontman John Ross said of "Q.Degraw": "This song is about my experiences with some health problems and how an extremely stressful situation can sharpen your focus on what’s important in life. It’s also about how that stress can sometimes cause you to dissociate from yourself." --

Good morning friends. My mom, Kay, is in her last days of this life. She has had so many strokes following emergency open heart surgery last July, she has had no speech or motion to tell us what she knows or feels anymore. She taught high school for 37 years. I just want her peace. She would listen to KEXP when I would come home to California. I've been playing music for her, especially Paul Simon. Will you play something for her? This is day seven of no food/water for her. I've told her the four truths to help her on her way: I love you. Thank you. Please forgive me. I'm sorry. I just want her free of the pain and disappointment of this lingering death. Help me wish her on. Love, Justine From Wyoming

Out thoughts are with Justine and her mom Kay this morning.

Of this track, Jeff Tweedy reveals, "I’ve realized over the years that a lot of the songs I’ve written have worked as reminders to myself to pay attention to various things. Sometimes I think I’ve figured out how the world works in some small way, and I worry I’ll forget it if I don’t sing it back to myself occasionally. "This song, I believe, is going to come in handy for just that purpose. I’m a person who needs to stay alert to how I’m treating others when I’m not feeling my best. And now that I mention it, when I look around, it seems like a lot of us have been taking things out on each other when we would be better served striving for understanding and empathy. I’m just trying to be honest with myself, and I guess I’m hoping if this song can help me focus on that, maybe someone else could find it useful in the same way." bit.ly

Welcome 2 Club XIII arrives June 3 via ATO. The new album gets its title from a venue where founding members Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley performed at the start of their careers. “There were no cool bars in town and Club XIII was the best we had,” Hood said in a statement, “but it wasn’t all that good, and our band wasn’t particularly liked there. From time to time the owner would throw us a Wednesday night or let us open for a hair-metal band we were a terrible fit for, and everyone would hang out outside until we were done playing. It wasn’t very funny at the time, but it’s funny to us now.” - pitchfork.com drivebytruckers.bandcamp.com

Florence + The Machine have shared a mystical, acoustic cover of The Stooges' 1973 track Search And Destroy. The rendition features on the deluxe version of their newly-released fifth studio album Dance Fever. Alongside the Stooges cover, the deluxe album additionally features unreleased acoustic versions of Dance Fever tracks Cassandra, Free, Morning Elvis and My Love.

No cover here.... Pete Townshend wrote part of the song in a swamp in Florida, drunk out of his mind. The swamp was covered in cockleburs that attached themselves to his hair and clothes, and stumbling along filled with frustration and pain he came up with "I'm looking for me, you're looking for you, we're looking at each other and we don't know what to do." Later on he denounced the song as not being one of his favourites, and said that "It sounded great in the mosquito-ridden swamp I made it up in - Florida at three in the morning, drunk out of my mind. But that's where the trouble always starts, in the swamp." www.songfacts.com

Good morning John. Our daughter Louisa is a big morning show fan. She turned 5 today and is feeling good as hell. Hoping you can play some Lizzo for the birthday dance party before school this morning. Thanks!! Jesse and peri ============ "The empowerment of women is at the heart of this particular anthem..." - www.npr.org

Jamie xx is back with his first new single since 2020, a euphoric dance track called "Let's Do It Again"! "I started making this tune last year, just as it felt like we might all be able to start doing the things we love again. I'm so happy to say 'LET'S DO IT AGAIN' is out today. And I can't wait to play it for ya this summer!" Jamie xx was the first xx member to break out on their own with 2015’s "In Colour". You can see xx in a 2017 KEXP In-studio performance: youtu.be

We celebrated 1980 yesterday for 50 years of KEXP and there is just too much music that year to fit into one day. Check out yesterday's show for two weeks on the streaming archive if you missed it! www.kexp.org

NEW MUSIC from Hot Chip! Hot Chip’s eighth studio album ‘Freakout/Release’ will be released on August 19 via Domino. Joe Goddard said: “We were living through a period where it was very easy to feel like people were losing control of their lives in different ways. There’s a darkness that runs through a lot of those tracks.”

The Los Angeles trio Automatic are releasing their sophomore album, Excess, next month. “It’s about spending your life making money and then spending it to fill the void created by said job,” the band’s Halle Saxon-Gaines said in a statement. “Kind of like going to LA to live your dreams,” Lola Dompé added. automatic-band.bandcamp.com

Frontman Yannis Philippakis says, "Musically '2am' is one of the poppiest songs we’ve ever written. It’s about repetitive cycles of destructive behaviour, which I think lots of people can relate to, and certainly it’s an expression of something that I struggle with. There’s something cathartic about expressing that feeling to this upbeat music that’s got a sense of release and the hope of resolution." -- The video for "2am" was filmed in Kyiv with a Ukrainian crew. The band wished “love & courage” to their friends in the country.: www.youtube.com -- Foals' new album, "Life Is Yours," will be out on June 17th.

Good morning John. Awesome 1980 show yesterday...thanks!! Took my daughter Emma to see Gang of Youths up in LA last night. Fantastic show. If you can play anything from them today for her and everyone that went that would be great 🤞 Dave in San Diego =============== “I wanted to reflect on how I became dependent on grief for solace and inspiration,” frontman Dave Le’aupepe said of the song in a press statement. “The cycle from numbness to acceptance to yearning plays a role in my approach to grieving my dad’s death. As a result, most of the time, I feel a bit futile as a person.”

Dave Wakeling, who was a guitarist and vocalist in The English Beat, said, "The song 'Best Friend,' I'm actually singing it to myself in the same mirror that 'Mirror in the Bathroom' was written in. It was actually my sister's bathroom in Birmingham. 'Best Friend' was singing a song to a reflection, you know, I just found I'm your best friend - you."

Dehd's new album, 'Blue Skies,' will be out on May 27. dehdforever.bandcamp.com -- Dehd was live on KEXP Thursday, May 5th. Look for that performance to be posted soon!

Echo & the Bunnymen are on tour and will be at The Showbox on September 1st! bunnymen.com

Bauhaus is playing tonight here in Seattle at The Paramount Theatre. bit.ly 'In the Flat Field,' Bauhaus' debut studio album, was released on November 3, 1980. The album is considered one of the first gothic rock records. Here's a look back at this landmark album, which celebrated it's 40th anniversary in 2020: bit.ly

Express is the second studio album by English alternative rock band Love and Rockets. It was released on 15 September 1986 on Beggars Banquet Records. An even greater departure from the band members' previous work as Bauhaus, the album's fusion of underground rock with pop stylings can be seen as an early example of alternative rock music, a genre that reached mainstream popularity in the early 1990s.

AllMusic called the song "one of the defining moments of early-'80s new wave dance and remains a wonderful atypical dancefloor smash".

Peter Murphy, of course, was the vocalist for Bauhaus. In an interview, he was aked what it is that "cuts you up and spits you out." He replied: "The path of discovery, self-knowledge, wisdom... once you feel you have it. Then the path will spit you out or off the way and ruin your assumptions of this path. In fact, it is a great mighty necessity for those spiritual seekers or so-called 'holy state' desirers who become arrogant." --- The song is driven by a violin riff played on a synthesizer. According to Simon Rogers, who produced the track, they brought in a musician to replicate it on viola, but it didn't sound right.

New Order are playing next door at Climate Pledge Arena Friday October 14th! www.neworder.com

Santigold is back with her first solo release since 2018. "I called this song "High Priestess" because this song was about my greatness," Santigold said in a press release. "I needed to be a witness to myself at that point, calling out my own power, my own fortitude, my own wisdom, because I felt like I had become disconnected from it, having been stripped out of the rhythm of life that I had cultivated for myself, and thrust into this smaller, one dimensional version of myself, grounded and isolated for too long. The lyrics are fun though, rap lyrics in general, boastful, cocky, but that’s what I was talking about underneath it all.”

Sudan Archives’ latest is called “Selfish Soul,” a song she describes as being “about women and the celebration of hair. It’s about representation of different hair textures and embracing all colors and textures of it.” She offered more detail in a statement: I feel like there’s an American standard of what beautiful hair is, and I wanted to show in this video that’s not what all beauty is; to showcase different hairstyles and different types of women and their hair. I was inspired by India Arie’s “I Am Not My Hair,” one of the first songs I heard about this subject. She talks about extensions and weaves and natural hair and nappy hair, and that she’s not her hair; she won’t conform to the comparisons that would come up if you had a weave or sew-in or natural hair or Afro — that doesn’t represent her. www.stereogum.com sudanarchives.bandcamp.com

Porridge Radio will be at Barboza on September 13th! Porridge Radio's 3rd album. The title – which was partly inspired by a collage by the British surrealist Eileen Agar – speaks to the “joy, fear and endlessness” of the past few years. - porridgeradio.bandcamp.com porridgeradio.com

Belfast's Robocobra Quartet! Every lyric comes from a UK newspaper about the daily routines of influencers, repeated word for word because truth seems stranger than fiction right now. twitter.com www.robocobraquartet.com

After several years of touring, singer Rob Zabrecky had an epiphany. He stumbled into a magic store in Baltimore, and got set on the path for a career change. For the last 20 years, Rob has been a world-class magician, storyteller and now author, after publishing his 2019 memoir, Strange Cures. Hear more in this 2020 NPR interview: www.npr.org

James Goodson’s Dazy and Ian Shelton’s Militarie Gun have released a collaborative track, “Pressure Cooker.” “Ever since I met Ian, we’ve had a tendency to veer off into long conversations about songwriting, but when he suggested we should try to do something together I thought he was just being friendly,” says Goodson in a statement. “He kept bringing it up so finally I showed him a song I’d been working on, and in no time at all he was sending back vocals and new ideas. I’m always blown away by the amount of energy and personality that Militarie Gun can pack into a song, and it was really cool to work together and see that happening in real time.” bit.ly dazysound.bandcamp.com

“You Get What You Give” became the signature song of the New Radicals, released as the lead single from their only album "Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too." The song received critical acclaim, with Rolling Stone calling it one of the greatest One Hit Wonder songs and later calling it one of the best songs of the 90s. -- In a September, 2006 edition of Time magazine, U2 guitarist The Edge said that this is the song he is most jealous of. -- See the official music video: www.youtube.com

This track was released in 1990 as the first single from The Farm's debut album Spartacus (1991), having been produced by Graham "Suggs" McPherson of Madness and Terry Farley. It contains a distinctive guitar intro by Keith Mullin which was possibly his most significant contribution to any one song. "Groovy Train" featured on the influential 1990 Madchester compilation album Happy Daze. bit.ly

This is a reggae-infused version of an old Rolling Stones song. The band felt free to change the lyrics from the Rolling Stones' original, which was necessary because they didn't have them. Lead singer Sean Dickson sang what he could remember and made up the rest.

This 1992 song started with a tiny sample of a bass drum beat and snare beat from Jimmy "Bo" Horne's 1978 tune "Let Me (Let Me Be Your Lover)." Vocalist Rob Birch looped the sample and created the bass groove that holds "Connected" together. "We are conscious of putting over something in our music," Nick Hallam said. "We fancy the idea of spreading good vibes the way that Bob Marley did. He reached millions in an even-handed, gentle way. You can't always knock people in the head. It's more subversive, in a way, to let positive vibes seep into people's brains, and perhaps change their way of thinking." www.songfacts.com

Second single from TV Priest's sophomore album. TV Priest will be playing The Clockout Lounge on August 7th - linktr.ee --- Watch TV Priest Live on KEXP at Home here - www.youtube.com