John Richards

This is the first song to legally license a Grateful Dead sample. And, in a smartly subtle move, Animal Collective doesn't even unveil it until three minutes in, after a dense, psychedelic junket through a sea of vocals and unintelligible sounds. When the dust settles, the song bobs into a 7/8 time signature, and a vocal cut from the Dead's "Unbroken Chain" bubbles to the top of the mix.

When asked about "Bad Habit," Foals vocalist Yannis Philippakis told NME: "I'm never gonna write 'Shiny Happy People.' It's about symbiotic relationships; when you see two people who are co-dependent - and whether that's also your own addictions as well."

This is the first single from Maps' new album, Colours. Reflect. Time. Loss which will be released on May 10. Just Saturday he released a second single, "Surveil." Check out the video here: bit.ly

During recording, The Chemical Brothers built a “studio within a studio”, containing all their old vintage/analogue gear, which had been gathering dust since the 1990s. The idea was that by making music how they used to, they’d rekindle some of the old inspiration and then tweak it for 2019 with the larger studio’s modern tech. Which is pretty much how No Geography sounds.

TR/ST will be live on KEXP on May 15th at noon! The performance is free and open to the public so get signed up starting 90 minutes before! That night TR/ST is at Neumos.

This song features vocals from Jamie "xx" Smith's fellow xx bandmate Romy Madley Croft, and the chorus samples Idris Muhammad's 1977 soul track "Could Heaven Ever Be Like This." "It was a song Romy wrote while she was in LA," Smith said in an interview. "She was on a writing trip and she was on her own, which is new for her. When she came home, we tried stuff out with it. There were a lot of different versions of it and I almost gave up. We tried this soul sample, and the lyrics worked perfectly. It was something I had been wanting to use for a long time."

The lyrics are based on a home video of Bono's mother where she is wearing lemon yellow. She died when Bono was 14. "I have very few memories of my mother because my father never talked about her after she died," Bono writes in the band bio U2 by U2. "So it was a very strange experience to receive, in the post, from a very distant relative, Super 8 footage of my mother, aged 24, younger than me, playing a game of rounders in slow motion. This beautiful, young Irish girl, with a narrow waist, curvaceous figure, dark gypsy hair. The film was early color and it looked extraordinary. It was a wedding, where she was the maid of honor in this beautiful lemon dress."

Shrink, the fourth album by German indie rock/electronica group The Notwist. This album is where they moved away from their punk origins and included elements of electronica, ambient, and jazz.

Amen Dunes performed "Blue Rose" live in the KEXP studio on August 14, 2018. Check it out here: bit.ly

Quivers were live on KEXP on March 21st. Keep an eye on the KEXP YouTube channel for the video of the performance to be posted. In the meantime, find "You're Not On My Mind" for download on the KEXP Song of the Day podcast: bit.ly

Arcade Fire unveiled the track on the September 28, 2013 episode of Saturday Night Live. The band performed the song with Haitian drummers, the Canadian musician Owen Pallet, who does their orchestral arrangements and Colin Stetson and Michael Lewis from Bon Iver.

"With heroin habits kicked, ‘Serfs Up’ is the sound of a band that’s downgraded to mellower substances for superior results." -NME Read more at: bit.ly

Listen Like Thieves was released on October 14th, 1985. It spent two weeks at number one on the Australian Kent Music Report Albums Chart, peaked at No. 11 on the United States Billboard 200, No. 24 on the Canadian RPM 100 Albums and top 50 in the United Kingdom.

Strand of Oaks just performed live on KEXP on April 26th. It should be posted soon but in the meantime you can find their in-studios from 2 & 4 years ago here: bit.ly

"For such an ambient variety of soul, the Mouse still keeps listeners on their toes. A baritone boogie on “Redeemer,” a deep-tone loose-tune guitar, allows for some laidback riff work that still has a point, trading talk with Karen O as she outlines the situation: “You’re not coming for me, I’m coming for you.” This record is just a back-and-forth fling of barbs between Burton and O’s bons mots, recalling the interchanging vocal and guitar work on xx and affording “Redeemer,” – but really all of Lux Prima – a minimalist sensibility with maximalist practicality that transfers from track to track." Read the full album review: bit.ly

Happy birthday to Lætitia Sadier of Stereolab! They're playing The Showbox on October 15th! Tickets & info: bit.ly

Electric Version was released today in 2003. In 2009, the album ranked number 79 in Rolling Stone's "100 Best Albums of the Decade"

The National are playing a sold out show at Marymoor Park on August 29th.The Portland Show on the 30th is also sold out but you can still get tickets to the Vancouver B.C. show on the 28th. Tickets & info: bit.ly

Foxing are playing Neumos on Sunday, May 19th. Tickets & info: bit.ly

Editors performed live in the KEXP studio a year ago tomorrow - May 7th, 2018. See the full performance here: bit.ly

DJ El Toro hosted Bloc Party for a KEXP in-studio back in 2012: bit.ly

Check out another single from Mal Blum, "Things Still Left To Say: www.malblum.com

David Byrne shed some light on his lyrical inspiration when he told Time Out: "Most of the words in 'Once in a Lifetime' come from evangelists I recorded off the radio while taking notes and picking up phrases I thought were interesting directions. Maybe I'm fascinated with the middle class because it seems so different from my life, so distant from what I do. I can't imagine living like that."

Film director Jim Jarmusch used to consider music videos as a movie in miniature until he got into a fight with Tom Waits over the making of the one for this song. Jarmush explained to Uncut magazine: "He wanted me to cut it differently, and I said, that 'it's like a film I'm making, Tom,' and, and he said, 'no, it's a commercial for this song. If people are watching TV, I don't want them changing channel. If you can pop this crazy image in the earlier, it would help this, that, blah blah blah.'" "We had a big fight in which I dropped him in an enclosed parking lot behind a metal door in LA in the middle of the night," Jarmush added. "He was pounding on the door. I vividly remember the insult, which no one has ever said to me again. He yelled through the door, 'God dammit, Jim, I'm going to glue your hair to the wall.' At which point I let him back in. It was a fight between friends. We reconciled."

"Everybody Knows" introduced Sharon Robinson, who become a frequent writing collaborator of Leonard Cohen. She recalled to Uncut: "Leonard had most of the lyric done when he handed it to me. There's a profound honesty in it. He's exposing something we all know and talk about with those close to us, but not publicly. It says we're not really in control of our destiny, there are others running things, and we go about our daily lives with that in the background."

The Black Keys are coming to the Tacoma Dome on November 23rd: bit.ly

This was released as the fourth single from Elephant. The single failed to chart. Of the track, Jack said, "Our idea was to see how far we could go with an eight track recorder, and I think how far we went is too far."

Somebody’s Knocking, is the new 14–track album from Mark Lanegan Band, to be released October 18th and available to preorder. To celebrate the release Lanegan has shared a hilarious video for first single “Stitch It Up” in which he also stars. Of the video Lanegan says: “I had a blast making this video. We had some friends over for dinner and Joe Cardamone met Donal Logue there and they hit it off. When I later talked to Joe about directing a vid he immediately said “Jimmy The Cab Driver” I called Donal and he laughed for like ten minutes and was totally into it. My head was pounding from laughing so hard the day of the shoot. It was extremely tough to keep a straight face when Donal was in character, he turned into an updated version of Jimmy so fast. Both Joe and Donal are brilliant. There’s a reason it’s the first video of mine I’ve been in for the last 15 years.” Here's the video: youtu.be

Watch Nirvana play the B side of “Whip It” at a 1991 OK Hotel gig: youtu.be

One afternoon in 1978, Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale—the two prime architects of the band Devo—were fidgeting in Peter Rudge’s office, near the Warwick Hotel, in Manhattan, with Mick Jagger. Rudge was the Rolling Stones’ manager, and Devo had recorded an odd cover of the band’s hit “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”—so odd that their label said they needed Jagger’s blessing to release it. Mothersbaugh put the tape in a boom box and pressed Play. As the sounds of the cover filled the room, Jagger sat stone-faced. What he was hearing didn’t sound much like the “Satisfaction” he’d written. Keith Richards’s iconic riff was gone, and the original melody was nowhere to be found. Was this a homage, Mick must have wondered, or were they mocking him? “He was just looking down at the floor swirling his glass of red wine,” Casale recently remembered, adding, “He didn’t even have shoes on, just socks and some velour pants. I don’t know what his habits were then, but this was early afternoon and it looked like he had just gotten up.” For thirty seconds or so, the men sat in silence, listening to the weird robo-funk coming from the boom box. Then something changed. “He suddenly stood up and started dancing around on this Afghan rug in front of the fireplace,” Casale said, of Jagger, “the sort of rooster-man dance he used to do, and saying”—he impersonated Jagger’s accent—“‘I like it, I like it.’ Mark and I lit up, big smiles on our faces, like in ‘Wayne’s World’: ‘We’re not worthy!’ To see your icon that you grew up admiring, that you had seen in concert, dancing around like Mick Jagger being Mick Jagger. It was unbelievable.”

Happy 59th birthday to John Flansburgh of TMBG!

Stipe remembers writing the lyrics while the rest of the guys went out for dinner. "It was pretty much done by the time they got back, and Peter hated it. He capitulated finally and it made the record. Thank God we have always had each other to convince ourselves how wrong and right we can be. He got me back with 'Electrolite.'"

Stef Chura is back in Seattle, at Barboza, on July 31st! bit.ly

Nilüfer Yanya released her debut album, Miss Universe on March 22 via ATO. The lead single from the project and our February 20th Song of the Day, “In Your Head,” is a near-viral sensation that has blown up since its release last month. Yanya says this about the song: “Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me and I get trapped. There’s the things I need disguised as things I think I only want, things I think I’m choosing out of choice not necessity... I think that’s what I wrote the song about, but what’s interesting to me, and what I think I was trying to get at, is the illusion of freedom.” bit.ly

"Children of the Revolution" was a No. 2 hit single in September 1972. The song broke their sequence of four official single releases all reaching No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart ("Hot Love", "Get It On", "Telegram Sam", "Metal Guru"). It did not receive a regular album release.

No upcoming Seattle date on Black Mountain's tour but you can see them at the Westward Music Festival in Vancouver B.C. on September 12th or catch their KEXP in-studio from 2016 here: bit.ly

There are drug references all over this song - "junky cosmonaut," "A million poppies gonna make me sleep" - but especially in the chorus: I'll be with you, girl, like being low Hey, hey, hey like being stoned David Lowery has never been clear on the meaning, but his record company did make him sign a letter saying that the lyric was "like being stone" in an effort to convince radio stations that the song was not about drugs.

The new Sebadoh album, Act Surprised is out on the 24th, they're playing The Tractor on June 2nd and on June 3rd they'll be live on The Morning Show at 9:30am!

Guitarist Johnny Marr told the New Musical Express that Morrissey sent a postcard to Linda McCartney asking her to play the piano on this track. She politely turned down the offer.

This was performed on every Midnight Oil tour since the issue of 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 as well as at the WaveAid concert. Surprisingly, the song was not featured on the Scream in Blue live album.

In 2001, Gabriel did an experiment at Georgia State University where he tried to teach 12 Bonobo Apes to play keyboards. No word on whether the monkeys were shocked.

Beck has two tour dates in Washington coming up in July. Find all his tour dates on his website: www.beck.com

Remember a couple years ago when David J performed live on The Morning Show? No, you didn't make that up! Her'e the proof: bit.ly

Six years since the release of its last record, Guards is storming back to the fore with its new album Modern Hymns due out May 22nd. Much of Beacon's emotion is likely derived from the fact that Follin wrote it for his 3-year-old daughter. "The message is essentially to not listen to what 'they' tell you," says Follin. "You can write your own story. You can direct the movie that is your life. There is no way it is 'supposed to be.' Someone just told you that, because someone before them told them that, and they never questioned it. It’s not real. Create your own reality. Question everything. Mistakes are a positive occurrence if you let them guide you." How did his daughter like the song? Well, she "dislikes most songs with reverb so she isn’t into it," Follin says with a laugh. Read more here: bit.ly

Silversun Pickups will be live on KEXP on May 31st at noon! No Seattle date on the tour (??!) so this is your chance to come see them!

Martha are a four-piece DIY indie/punk band from Pity Me, a village in County Durham in the North East of England.

Versing offers a track-by-track breakdown of 10000 in an interview with KEXP: bit.ly

The show at Neumos on May 28th is sold out but you can come see Fontaines D.C. for free at KEXP at 3pm that day! Sign up starts at 1:30 and it will fill up fast...

English post punk band Gang of Four enjoyed little commercial success but their blend of punk with funk has been influential on a number of 21st century bands including Bloc Party and Franz Ferdinand. This song was the lead track on their debut EP, which was an indie hit. They later included it on their first album, Entertainment! on the EMI record label. Gang Of Four singer Jon King told Clash Magazine: "The song was on our debut Fast Product EP, which became a big indie hit. But we weren't paid a cent for our work, majorly ripped off, so we re-recorded it for Entertainment!. I regret not punching out the bloke who ran the label. (Note to self: do this before you die) We're often asked "why did you sign to a major label if you're so alternative?" One answer: EMI at least paid us for the records it sold."

The Budos Band were live in-studio on April 20th so keep an eye out for that video. Budos Band saxophonist Jared Tankel was also on KEXP's Sound & Vision: bit.ly

Brownout performed "Supernaut" at their latest in-studio: bit.ly

This cover is the last track that the band recorded together. Even when covering one of classic rock's most famous songs, most artists would show a degree of deference. But most artists aren't Lemmy Kilmister, who heaped unequivocal praise on Motorhead's new take on the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil." “I thought we beat them,” he told USA Today. “I thought we beat it to death. I mean, I like the Stones’ version, but I like ours better.”