Song of the Day: !!! - Slyd

Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of 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 selection, featured on the Afternoon Show with Kevin Cole, is “Slyd” by !!! from the 2013 album THR!!!ER on Warp.

!!! - Slyd (MP3)

Formed in 1995, !!! - pronounced by saying any three monosyllabic sounds thrice; "chk" is the band's go-to noise - emerged as one of the 00s' most prominent dance-punk bands, creating slinky disco jams that were built for both sweaty rock clubs and massive outdoor audiences. Led onstage by the inimitable Nic Offer, the Californian sextet has gained a reputation for their energetic live shows, where attendance always results in dancing, and nearly always results in most audience members being covered in some amount of Offer's sweat. !!!'s fifth full-length, the incredibly-titled THR!!!ER, due April 29th, finds the band as limber as ever and reaching for Moonwalk-level heights. The album's first (of seven?) single, "Slyd" is a shifting, funky jam that distills all of !!!'s musical strengths - psychedelic-tinged guitars, warped vocals, so-smooth-it-hurts grooves - into a wobbly, four-minute collage of sounds that works like a one-song !!! retrospective. When the voice sample at the beginning of the song says "that's weird", it doesn't mean "Slyd" is weird in the sense that it's strange; it means that "Slyd" is great in its own jubilant, frenetic, "Let's Get Weird" way.

!!! begin a tour behind THR!!!ER - typing that never gets old - next month, and they'll make two stops in the Pacific Northwest in June: They'll play Portland's Bunk Bar on the 3rd and Vancouver's Fortune Sound Club the next day. (Sadly, no Seattle date is scheduled, at least as of yet.) View the rest of their tour dates and keep up with the band on their Facebook and website. Watch Nic and co. perform a roaring version of "AM/FM" (complete with a shout out to a certain Seattle radio station) from the 2010 Capitol Hill Block Party below.