Kevin Cole

Will Toledo on the CSH live experience: "A lot of [audience members] aren’t expecting the concert to be as physically taxing as it is. So we had a lot of people passing out or struggling, getting dehydrated. And so as the tour went on, we kind of got used to having to stop shows to make sure that people were getting attended to. "People who passed out were getting revived and brought to their feet. And that’s really hard to juggle as a band, because you also want to push the energy as much as possible. You don’t want to stop the show for anything, but you also want to take care of your audience. So when you have people who are not used to shows and not used to how they need to take care of their body to get through a show, yeah, that becomes a challenge." tinyurl.com Car Seat Headrest performed this song as part of their incredible Live on KEXP session in 2018. Check out the full set here: bit.ly

IDLES will bring their World Tour 2024 to The Paramount Theatre on Tuesday and Wednesday, May 7th and 8th! IDLES performed this song on the Jimmy Fallon Show last night; check it out here: tinyurl.com Another fun IDLES fact: Released on this day in 2019, the quartet release the single "Mercedes Marxist," featuring B-side "I Dream Guillotine" The new album, TANGK, is due out February 16th. This song features James Murphy and Nancy Whang from LCD Soundsystem. tinyurl.com

SPRINTS will be at Madame Lou's on Wednesday, March 6! tinyurl.com Of this track, the Dublin quartet share, "'Adore Adore Adore' is a guttural reaction to my experience of criticism, gender and misogyny. People can't seem to stop pressing their idea of what being a woman or acting like a woman is or should be upon us. You can't act like this, you can't say that, you have to be born with this or that and it's exhausting. "There is still a different standard of behaviour expected from me vs even the other members in Sprints. There is a different set of invisible rules I am supposed to abide by - I am supposed to fit their mould and give them what they want - and not deliver what it is I am here to do. "So at a time when trans rights are under attack, people are trying to force upon us what they think a woman is or should be, this is the outward expression of my own frustration, struggle and rage." tinyurl.com This track was a Featured Song of the Day as selected by your very own Kevin Cole. Read all about it and download your very own (free!) copy here: tinyurl.com

Tkay Maidza will be at Neumos TONIGHT! The amazing local superstar TezaTalks is opening. tinyurl.com Takudzwa Victoria Rosa "Tkay" Maidza is a Zimbabwean-born Australian singer-songwriter and rapper. Her cover of this Pixies track was released as part of a compilation record titled Bills & Aches & Blues, a release featuring covers of 4AD artists covering other 4AD artists. 4ad.com soundcloud.com

This is the only song on Surfer Rosa not entirely written by frontman Frank Black; he co-wrote it with Pixies bass player Kim Deal, who was using the stage name Mrs. John Murphy at the time. Deal, who sang lead on the track, took inspiration from a 1986 Bruce Beresford movie, Crimes Of The Heart. In the film, Sissy Spacek plays a married woman who falls in love with a black teenager. What exactly is "gigantic" in this song is up for debate. Kim Deal has said that it is purely innocent, telling Sounds in 1988 that there was no phallic imagery intended. "My personality came out," she said. "I'm fresh and clean!" The song made a big impression on Kurt Cobain. He said in 1992, "I wish Kim was allowed to write more songs for the Pixies, because 'Gigantic' is the best Pixies song and Kim wrote it." Kim Deal reacted modestly to NME, "Well, it's better than somebody saying, 'Oh God, you suck.'" tinyurl.com

Canadian singer-songwriter Hannah Judge has announced a new EP as fanclubwallet, Our Bodies Paint Traffic Lines, due out on March 29 via Cool Online. She made this one with a full band, including bassist Nathan Reid, guitarist Eric Graham, and drummer Michael Watson (who also produced and mixed the EP). The first single is "Band Like That," which finds fanclubwallet’s bedroom pop sound filled out a bit. "I had spent months studying everyone else’s bands," Hannah says, continuing, "What made them so good? Why couldn’t I be like them? And that’s where this new track came from." tinyurl.com

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard will be at The Gorge on Saturday, September 14th, 2024. The Silver Cord is divided into two parts, the first featuring snappy "hooks only" versions of the songs, with the second offering enticing extended cuts. The highlight of the entire piece might be this track, the intimidating "Theia," which transforms from a tight 3-minute rack into a mind-bending and meditative 20-minute odyssey. The Silver Cord is their 25th studio album!

Anushka Chkheidze is an electronic music producer from Tbilisi, Georgia. "Lost Luggage" is a result of Anushka moving from home to another place, feeling nostalgic about the people and places she loves. Link to artist's Bandcamp as well as their mesmerizing video: tinyurl.com

Released on this day in 2010! The song features the vocals of the Massive Attack duo plus longtime cohort, ragga-reggae veteran Horace Andy. Blur's Damon Albarn plays keyboard. There are references to banking bailouts on this song. Robert "3D" Del Naja quipped to the NME January 16, 2010: "You know us. We like to mix the cod-politics in there, but in a more subtle way." The album title name checks a small cluster of German islands in the North Sea that were used as a bombing range by the British between 1945 and 1952. 3D explained, "I was watching 'Shadow Of The Vampire,' which was partly shot or partly based on the Heligoland Islands and when the word came up on the screen I thought, 'Wow! I love that!' Then, when I was doing my research, I realised that the place had quite a lot of really weird and wonderful history. One of the meanings of the name is 'holy island', which is obviously very poetic in this day and age. "And I love the fact that the British tried to detonate the biggest sub-nuclear bomb ever, called The Big Bang, on the island just after the Second World War. The actual destruction of the islands was thought of as an acceptable consequence of the detonation, which I thought was mental." tinyurl.com

What Do We Do Now, recorded at Mascis' Bisquiteen studio in Western Massachusetts, is the follow-up to 2018’s Elastic Days. "When I’m writing for the band," Mascis relays, "I’m always trying to think of doing things Lou and Murph would fit into. For myself, I’m thinking more about what I can do with just an acoustic guitar, even for the leads. Of course, this time, I added full drums and electric leads, although the rhythm parts are still all acoustic. Usually, I try to do the solo stuff more simply so I can play it by myself, but I really wanted to add the drums. "Once that started, everything else just fell into place. So it ended up sounding a lot more like a band record. I dunno why I did that exactly, but it’s just what happened." tinyurl.com

Happy Birthday to Brandon Paak Anderson, who was born on this day in 1986! "Lockdown" finds Anderson .Paak singing about the Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality, sparked by the death of George Floyd. .Paak wrote the song while watching the protests on the news and released it on Juneteenth (June 19), a day celebrating the end of slavery in the US. Anderson admitted he wanted to get involved in the protests but was initially afraid of catching Covid. "I was thinking I'm going miss out on the revolution because I'm scared of coronavirus, so I had to make a song. "You're supposed to have a feeling when you see someone get killed in broad daylight in the streets for no reason, and it's happening all the time," he said. "So when artists speak on it and make these songs, it causes a reaction, and people look at it and feel something. You shouldn't be silent to this. You shouldn't be cool with seeing somebody die in the streets, then have such an opinion about looting." tinyurl.com

"Be free. Be kind." That is the philosophy of the Croatian-Slovenian duo whose music carries a strong message of love and hope, complemented by R&B and jazz grooves. Sara was born in Croatia and Nina has Slovenian roots, but they met in Vienna, Austria, at one of Europe’s best art and music universities, the “Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Graz”, “Kunstuniversität Graz” (KUG); it is not an entirely surprising fact as KUG has always attracted talented young musicians from the Balkan region. Sara and Nina met, shared their love for jazz, soul, r’n’b and pop and decided to start a band. tinyurl.com When listening to their seductive R&B-jazz-pop-soul tracks, you’ll want to see how Sara Ester Gredelj (vocals, piano) and Nina Korošak-Serčič (drums) bring their music to life in what is jokingly called "collective group therapy."

Madness is embarking on their C'est la Vie in America tour, and will be playing WAMU Theatre on May 22, 2024! Tix here: tinyurl.com This was written by Madness bass player/vocalist Carl Smyth and guitarist Christopher Foreman. The house where Smyth grew up inspired the lyric. The song's video features the band as a cloth-cap wearing family squashed into a terraced house. Drummer Dan "Woody" Woodgate recalls, "The knocking-on-the-door bit where somebody comes out, goes, 'Where are they?' and the others sneak in and close the door... That's The Flintstones. We stole lots of ideas from the Keystone Kops and Benny Hill." tinyurl.com

"I don’t want to shy away from the darkness of being a human," vocalist Genevieve Glynn-Reeves says of their new music. "But by that merit, I don’t want to be fully consumed by it and forget to have fun and be silly and make light of it. I think it’s important to have these difficult conversations with a sense of lightness and humour." Of the single, she adds, "It’s kind of a poison pill disguised as a pop confection. It’s taking a satirical look at celebrity culture, materialism, and where we draw our self-worth from, but it’s masquerading as a sexy, unrequited love song. That’s how it began life, but we reworked the music with Ross towards a darker place, and the lyrics took a more sarcastic and satirical turn." tinyurl.com

Yard Act will be at The Crocodile here in Seattle on Saturday, June 8. tinyurl.com Frontman James Smith reveals, "'We Make Hits' started like most Yard Act songs do these days, in Ryan’s spare bedroom. He’d recorded a couple of basslines and I went round to throw some words on top just to see what might happen. "I was reflecting on how things had changed so much for us over the last few years when I realised that sat round a laptop trying to make each other laugh, necking black coffee and craning our heads out of the window to smoke cigs every hour or so, all that had really changed within the writing process was that, thanks to my baby, we were at Ryan’s house rather than mine and that Ryan had a place of his own now, which was nice. "Despite the outside blowing up, behind closed doors, we were the same, and I’m grateful for that. You can see the cynicism and the silliness on the surface of 'We Make Hits' without much effort, but at its core, for me, it’s really an ode to friendship and the unfiltered joy you feel when you’re making music with the people you hold dear in your life." tinyurl.com

The Whigs and The Church have just announced a co-headlining tour this summer, and will be playing The Showbox on July 5th! tinyurl.com Greg Dulli broke down the album track by track with Spin Magazine, and shared with regards to this track, "I really liked the riff to the Jackson 5’s 'I Want You Back,' and I had become a big fan of Twin Peaks. And 'Debonair' was my attempt to marry the riff from 'I Want You Back' to the chord progression of the Twin Peaks intro. [Laughs.]" bit.ly Catch the Whigs' archived Live at KEXP performance here: bit.ly

Singer-songwriter Will Anderson, the frontman of the psychedelic Hotline TNT, knows this reality of love all too well. It is exactly those tough topics that the artist hopes to tackle with his band’s latest single, "Protocol." "This song is about falling on a metaphorical sword - sometimes you just gotta hold an L even when in your heart of hearts you know it's not fair. Saving the relationship is worth taking the blame now and again," Anderson shares. tinyurl.com

Songs of The Clash: Hearts & Minds & Crooked Beats is a vinyl compilation featuring artists the world over, covering songs of The Clash and celebrating their music and human rights message, with profits benefiting the International Rescue Committee. The project invited musicians to reflect on the impact and ethos of "the only band that mattered," and to revisit and record their own takes on the songs that influenced them. The album was released yesterday on International Clash Day, February 7th, 2024. The holiday, established in 2013 by KEXP DJ John Richards, marks a global annual celebration of The Clash’s message and legacy. tinyurl.com

Angie McMahon will perform LIVE at KEXP on March 11th at 11am, then later that evening at Madame Lou's in Belltown. Get your tickets for the Seattle show now! tinyurl.com A quiet determination pervades the Melbourne singer’s beautiful second album, filled with earnest incantations that soothe like a balm. As its title suggests, Light, Dark, Light Again moves through emotional and sonic worlds both gentle and heavy, always returning to the former. McMahon’s debut, 2019’s excellent Salt, dealt in crunchy guitars and the singer’s commanding lower range. While there’s still some of that here, as on the thumping Mother Nature, this record has a more delicate touch – it’s largely light and airy, while still packing an emotional punch. tinyurl.com

A recent Song of the Day, as selected by our very own Kevin Cole! Katie Crutchfield — best known as Waxahatchee — enlists the talents of MJ Lenderman (of the band Wednesday, as well as a solo artist) for an unconventional love song. Crutchfield reveals, "I wrote [this track] backstage at Wolf Trap when I was on tour opening for Jason Isbell and Sheryl Crow. I’m really interested in writing love songs that are gritty and unromantic. I wanted to make a song about the ebb and flow of a longtime love story. I thought it might feel untraditional, but a little more in alignment with my experience to write about feeling insecure or foiled in some way internally, but always finding your way back to a newness or an intimacy with the same person." Read on, and download it right here for free: tinyurl.com

On this track, Brimheim explores the edges of infatuation as it descends into obsession and perhaps delusion. "I wanted to write about the enraptured early love that turns you into a crazy person," Helena Heinesen Rebensdorff, aka Brimheim, says about "Normies." "I'm fascinated by the way infatuation makes you willing to morph into someone else." "On the surface, the song seems like a conventional love story, but to me, there’s a wretchedness about it — I imagine a stalker fallen into dangerous delusion." The song is a reflection on the romantic entanglements that have previously lead Helena to discard healthy boundaries entirely: "I’ve been so completely love-struck that I’ve jumped on a train to travel cross country in the middle of the night to show up uninvited and unannounced on a near stranger’s doorstep. It’s a completely unhinged thing to do!" tinyurl.com

From the debut album by the xx, released in 2009. The Pitchfork review for 'xx' said: "The xx are four 20-year-olds from South London who make predominantly slow, furtive pop music, mostly about sex. They are also one of the stranger recipients of UK hype in recent memory. They have no calling-card song. "Without one gimmick song they'll never be able to reproduce, without an alternate agenda, without a set-in-stone hip influence, the xx start to sound like a real actual band, even if, after dozens of listens, it's nearly incomprehensible to think that a group so fresh-faced produced xx." bit.ly Check out the xx live in the KEXP studio: tinyurl.com

Today's Song of the Day, as chosen by John Richards! www.kexp.org Cutouts is a side project of Nation of Language's bass player, Alex MacKay. MacKay says he knew he wanted to make a remix of "Spare Me the Decision" because it's his personal favorite from the album. tinyurl.com

"As a blind person I've never had an actual visual experience, sound is the way I've always seen the world." It's from this perspective that Seattle's rising star Brittany Davis invites us to see life from their unique, underrepresented lens on Image Issues; a deeply candid and profoundly curated 'audio movie' serving as Davis' debut full-length project out March 1 via Pearl Jam founder Stone Gossard’s Loosegroove Records. With Image Issues, Davis turns their vibrant creativity and seemingly-limitless talent to share all they’ve endured - from discrimination as a Black, non-binary, blind musician, to traumatic family experiences touching on abuse, gun violence, and the prison system - as a means to honor how much they’ve already overcome and risen above. tinyurl.com

Beth Gibbons has co-produced her upcoming album with James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Depeche Mode, Blur), with additional production from Talk Talk drummer Lee Harris. It's a long time coming — Beth signed to Domino in 2013 — and she made if after a period of reflection and "lots of goodbyes." "I realized what life was like with no hope," says Beth. "And that was a sadness I’d never felt. Before, I had the ability to change my future, but when you’re up against your body, you can’t make it do something it doesn’t want to do." "People started dying. When you’re young, you never know the endings, you don’t know how it’s going to pan out. You think: we’re going to get beyond this. It’s going to get better. Some endings are hard to digest," Beth says, adding, "Now I’ve come out of the other end, I just think, you’ve got to be brave." tinyurl.com

"Sour Times" isn't exactly the feature single from Portishead's first album, Dummy, but it might as well be. It's the one whose video samples scenes from their Lynchian short film To Kill a Dead Man, whose images also make up the cover for the Dummy album. The album Dummy as a whole attracted critical acclaim and won the 1995 Mercury Music Prize. It is also credited with founding the Trip-Hop genre. This song is, in fact, a very good demonstration of the Trip-Hop style: moody, a little psychedelic, and containing just a lick of R&B roots. The eerie percussion and guitar were sampled from Lalo Schifrin's "Danube Incident," music composed by the Argentine composer for an episode of Mission Impossible. tinyurl.com

Future Islands will be at The Paramount Theatre on Friday, September 13. tinyurl.com "Peach" is slick and danceable, upbeat in instrumentation, but far heavier on a lyrical level. Frontman Samuel T. Herring is caught amidst conflicting forces larger than himself, like a man overboard struggling to stay afloat on stormy seas: “Death is in season / And it’s pushing me round,” he sings, evoking Alice in Wonderland (“This one makes you big / In a cruel world / And this one makes you small / In a lonely world”) and ultimately resolving to hold onto hope: “But I’m not giving up / Not today.” tinyurl.com futureislands.bandcamp.com

The North is the sixth full-length studio album by Canadian indie pop band Stars, and has been characterized as having a more upbeat feel to it compared to previous works, as Amy Millan notes: the album was meant to be "playful, joyful and hopeful." The album debuted at number 5 on the Canadian Albums Chart. The album's cover shows the Habitat 67 complex, an experimental housing development as well as architectural landmark in Montreal, the band's home city. bit.ly

Middle Kids leader Hannah Joy co-wrote the infectious "Dramamine" with Tim Fitz, who happens to be her husband, and it captures some of the happy helplessness of falling in love. Their new record will come out next month! See the colorful accompanying video, which Fitz co-directed with Nick Mckk: youtu.be

Neill Kirby McMillan Jr. (August 2, 1957 – February 7, 2024), known professionally as Mojo Nixon, was an American musician and actor best known for his novelty song "Elvis Is Everywhere," which was an alternative staple on MTV. His style could generally be defined as psychobilly, a musical genre which blends rockabilly with punk rock. tinyurl.com

One of Kevin's favourite songs from one of his favourite albums, released on this day in 1977! Running 9:58, this is Television's magnum opus, renown for the inventive interplay between guitarists Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd. It's the title track to their 1977 debut album, but the song was years in the making. It started as an acoustic ballad Verlaine put together; the band started playing it in 1974 when they were regulars at the club CBGB in New York City (Television was the first to emerge from that club, which later provided a home base for Blondie, the Ramones and the Talking Heads). They honed the song through live performance and diligent rehearsal, so when they recorded the album in 1976, they had perfected it. The entire album was recorded and mixed in just three weeks. When the Marquee Moon album was released in February 1977, the title track was clearly the standout, but not something that could garner radio play in America. It was also a tough sell because the band wasn't known outside of New York, and it didn't adhere to a particular genre: "pop" doesn't do justice to the song's complexity, and it's far from "punk." bit.ly Watch Television's "Marquee Moon [pt.1]" (Live in Brazil, 2005): youtu.be

Released on this day in 1974! Here Come the Warm Jets is the debut solo album by Brian Eno, and was recorded and produced by Eno following his departure from Roxy Music. It blends glam and pop stylings with avant-garde approaches. www.brian-eno.net Douglas Wolk of Blender described the song as "a two-note wonder built around an all-hell-breaks-loose guitar meltdown by King Crimson's Robert Fripp." tinyurl.com

John Williams was born on this day in 1932 in Floral Park, New York. He's the mastermind behind the music of Star Wars, the Indiana Jones series, and Jaws.

New Ibibio Sound Machine record out May 3rd! tinyurl.com Fronted by London-born Nigerian singer Eno Williams, Ibibio Sound Machine is a clash of African and electronic elements inspired in equal measure by the golden era of West African funk, disco, and modern post-punk and electro. Evocative Nigerian poetic imagery set against an edgy Afro-Electro soundscape gives the band a unique space within the wave of modern Afrocentric sounds sweeping the globe. Check out the official music video for this track here: tinyurl.com