Brooklyn-bred band Grizzly Bear return with their fifth LP, a release KEXP Music Director Don Yates calls "an adventurous set of densely layered and intricately arranged prog-pop, featuring a punchier, more beat-driven sound to more forcefully drive home the band's dark, imagistic lyrics of decay and alienation." Long-running Madison, WI-based group Rainer Maria return with their first new album in eleven years, "a strong set of moody, cathartic rock with churning guitars and muscular rhythms accompanying Caithlin De Marrais's dynamic vocals and emotive lyrics." And UK electronic act UNKLE (aka James Lavelle) return after seven years with a follow-up to 2010’s Where Did the Night Fall. The new album features a plethora of guests including Primal Scream’s Andrew Innes, Queen of the Stone Age’s Troy Van Leeuwan, Dhani Harrison, Mark Lanegan, ESKA, Keaton Henson, and the Duke Spirit’s Liela Moss.
Caspar Babypants, who was last Friday's in-studio guest on The Morning Show on KEXP, shares his 13th full-length of updated traditional kids songs and originals. DJ Shadow shares the EP The Mountain Has Fallen, an accompaniment to his most recent LP, The Mountain Will Fall. (See? He told you so.) And Interpol release the 10th anniversary edition of their major label debut, Our Love to Admire, available as a two-LP vinyl set, a double LP with bonus DVD, or a CD/DVD set. The DVD features a 2007 12-song performance at the London Astoria. The band is currently working on a new album for Matador Records, sure to appear in this column upon its release in 2018.
Philadelphia band The War on Drugs return with the fourth album. KEXP Music Director Don Yates calls it, "an excellent set of expansive, '80s-steeped rock. Beautifully produced, the band's music has never sounded better than it does here with a bliss-inducing combination of expansive guitar leads, …
Philly-based band The Districts return with their third LP, what KEXP Music Director Don Yates calls, "their strongest set to date, with a fuller, more dynamic and densely textured sound combining thick, swirling guitars, muscular rhythms and often-dark lyrics of isolation and dysfunctional relatio…