Friday Music News

02/03/2017

Janice Headley

Mere weeks before heading out on his Life Aquatic Tour (yes, inspired by the Wes Anderson film), west coast rapper Vince Staples shares the new single "BagBak." Listen below. Frankly, I don't remember any scenes with a bagbak, but you can definitely envision Bill Murray and his band of interns storming the Belafonte to these driving beats. Staples plays Showbox Sodo on Monday, February 27th with Kilo Kish. [ Consequence of Sound ]

Over the holidays, Amazon Music kinda owned it with not one, but two Christmas compilations featuring some of your favorite KEXP artists. Well, Valentine's Day is right around the corner, and they're at it again, offering not one, but two playlists of music titled Love Me and Love Me Not. And for the occasion, Okkervil River has covered "You Don’t Love Me Yet" by 13th Floor Elevators frontman Roky Erickson. The band served as Erickson’s backing band on the 2010 album True Love Cast Out All Evil, and frontman Will Sheff elaborates, “In the early stages of producing True Love Cast Out All Evil, I was given a large amount of archival video and audio from Roky’s life, as context and for possible use in some found-sound collages for the noisier bits of the album. I remember combing through them slowly and being deeply moved by a home movie of Roky performing ‘You Don’t Love Me Yet’ on an out-of-tune guitar. The song — especially in this performance — seemed to capture, for me, all of the wisdom and spirit and childlike tenderness that’s accessible underneath the more gruff and scary side of Roky’s persona. This version was recorded with the old lineup of Okkervil River, doing that home movie arrangement, everybody live in the studio, playing it once and moving on. It’s kind of like a snapshot of a snapshot." Both playlists are streaming exclusively on Amazon Music. [ Stereogum ]

Today only, 200+ artists and labels are donating their proceeds from Bandcamp to the American Civil Liberties Union. You can see the full list here, but to mention a few: labels include Sub Pop, Merge, Kill Rock Stars, Hyperdub, Epitaph, and artists include Four Tet, Speedy Ortiz, Los Campesinos!, and Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, just to name a very few. Merge Records is also matching proceed donations, effectively doubling their donation. Bandcamp's decision for this day of donations was made in response to Trump’s executive order closing U.S. borders to citizens and refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries. [ Pitchfork ]

Father John Misty continues the campaign for his forthcoming LP, Pure Comedy, out April 7th via Sub Pop. (Check out previously shared singles on the KEXP Blog here, here, and here.) Earlier today, he stopped by Lauren Laverne's BBC Radio 6 show and debuted another one: the 13-minute-long "Leaving L.A.," which he tells Laverne took him nearly three years to write. Listen below. [ Under the Radar ]

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Daily Roundups

Yesterday, M.I.A. teased a new song, and today we get the whole dang thing: hear the single "P.O.W.A." below via a video directed by Maya Arulpragasam (aka M.I.A.) herself. She also tweeted a lyric sheet if you'd like to sing along with the "wa wa wa wa / pa pa pa pa" chorus. [ Stereogum ]

Daily Roundups

Thursday Music News

This past Tuesday, we aired an exclusive in-studio session with Regina Spektor where she performed a gorgeous live version of the song "Black and White." Today, we've got an official video for the track, spotlighting Spektor performing in Chicago's closed down Uptown Theater as a ballerina dances.…