Song of the Day: Pickwick - Window Sill

Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part 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 Morning Show with John Richards, is “Window Sill” by Pickwick from the 2013 self-released album Can't Talk Medicine... out today!

Pickwick - Window Sill (MP3)

Formed in 2008, Pickwick initially played folk music before one fateful night in 2009, when the the band played a pair of Grateful Dead tunes reworked with a soul emphasis at one of the Tractor Tavern's cover nights. After that night, they ditched their woodsy songs and started writing a set of new R&B-damaged rock tunes, leading to more local attention, a regionally best-selling record (2012's Myths), and now, a self-released full length album on the eve of their first national tour. Like a less restrained "Black and White Town", "Window Sill's" pounding rhythms and stabbing keyboards owe as much to smooth R&B as they do to ragged garage rock. Lead singer Galen Disston wails with an uncontrollable fever while his bandmates rally him in a call-and-response chorus with a hook so slick it masks Disston's dark lyrics. In another era, this would have been the A-side of an horn-driven, ass-shaking R&B 45, but it's not 1972 - it's 2013, and Pickwick's soulful melodies and crunching guitars are just as likely to make the indie kids lose their cool as anything Motown put out during the 1970s.

Pickwick's full-length debut is out today! They are currently playing at SXSW, but after they leave Austin, they're heading back up the western side of the country, including a stop at Portland's Wonder Ballroom on March 23rd. (Chances are that they'll be back in Seattle sooner than later, though.) Keep up with the band on their website and Facebook, and watch the band play "Staged Names" live at KEXP last December below.