A Deeper Listen

Jesse Beaman, an ambient composer based in Mexico City, joins a growing number of artists who are no longer making their music available on Spotify. He cites the platform’s requirement for musicians to have 1,000 yearly streams to receive royalties, as well as CEO Daniel Ek’s investments in Helsing, a company that makes AI-powered defense weaponry. While his platform may not be as big...

Will Toledo, vocalist for Seattle-based Car Seat Headrest, wanted the band’s latest release to be a concept album in the tradition of a rock opera. The Scholars delivers just that: strong storytelling within each of its nine tracks, inventing characters in a “fictional America,” attesting to the human search for meaning inside and outside of ourselves. Toledo stopped by KEXP earl...

Seiji Oda pays respect to his Oakland roots in his 2025 album HUMAN + NATURE . He not only samples Bay Area titans like Mac Dre and Trunk Boiz — the record also features numerous collaborations with local artists making waves in the scene today, like the producer ClayDough.    KEXP’s Dusty Henry spoke with Oda about his signature “lofi hyphy” sound, blending raw n...

Open Mike Eagle’s tenth studio album,  Neighborhood Gods Unlimited , continues the rap legacy that he started in the late 2000s when he cofounded the trio Thirsty Fish. From there, he made a bigger name for himself as a solo artist, starting with his 2010 debut,  Unapologetic Art Rap . Along the way, he even appeared in the cartoon  Adventure Time  as a rapping gingerbrea...

When Kay Redden moved to Seattle from Garland, Texas, she made it her mission to connect with her newly adopted home through music. So, in searching for meaning after mother’s death in April 2015, she launched Den Tapes, spending countless hours hand-dubbing cassettes. It wasn’t long before local bands gravitated toward her down-to-earth, community-oriented approach to music distributi...

Michael Imperioli, the actor known for his roles in The Sopranos and The White Lotus, is also the guitarist of a three-piece indie band called Zopa. Their latest album, Diamond Vehicle, came out in early 2025.  KEXP’s Martin Douglas spoke with Imperioli about how he started playing music, the influence of Buddhism in his songwriting, and his fondness of The Beatles, Lou Reed, and The Sm...

July 18, 2025 was the last day of Wu-Tang Clan’s farewell concert tour, The Final Chamber. One of their stops was at Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena, where KEXP’s Dusty Henry, Martin Douglas, and Larry Mizell, Jr. rapped alongside thousands of fans. We recap the concert and pay tribute to the group’s decades-long legacy. “Wu-Tang Clan is our generation’s equivale...

Marlon Williams, singer-songwriter from New Zealand, uses his deep vibrato on more than a dozen new original songs written entirely in the Indigenous language Te Reo Maori. It was a years-long endeavor, with songs featuring collaborators like KOMMI and Lorde.  KEXP contributor Celine Teo-Blockey spoke with Williams in Sydney, Australia last month. He was attending the premiere of the album&rs...

Cincinnati-based trio Artificial Go released their sophomore album,  Musical Chairs , in May 2025. Their blend of post-punk riffs, danceable rhythms, and faux British accents has made them one of the most exciting groups on the scene. During their live shows, singer Angie Willcut wears a marching band uniform and literally marches around the audience. Their patently unserious attitude is exac...

Music journalist Jeff Weiss recently wrote a book titled Waiting for Britney Spears , documenting the pop stars rise and fall from the public eye. But the book isn’t a historical account, it’s an “allegedly true” story that blurs fact and fiction, putting Weiss himself in the middle of the action. His writing takes a playful tabloid-style tone — a commentary on the ta...

Natalie Lew, also known as Sea Lemon, released her debut album  Diving for a Prize  in June 2025 on Luminelle Recordings. Across 12 songs, reverb-heavy guitars wash underneath vocals that allude to made-up stories and unhealthy obsessions. For example, “Stay” draws inspiration from the real-life antics of an elderly security guard at a thrift store while “Rear View&rdqu...

Max Perla and Vincent John make up Eraserhood Sound, the duo that scores the animated PBS Kids series Carl the Collector. In the spirit of Vince Guaraldi’s signature sound in Peanuts cartoons, show creator Zach Ohora says that Eraserhood’s “synth and soul” formula provides the perfect soundscape for the everyday happenings of an autistic raccoon and his neurodiverse friend...

Sharp Pins is the solo project of 20-year-old Kai Slater, who also runs a zine called Hallogallo. Based in Chicago, he started the zine during the height of the coronavirus pandemic as a teenager, overwhelmed and frustrated with a life dominated by screens. So, both his music and zine are analog, made with tape recorders, photo copiers, and type writers. KEXP’s Dusty Henry talks with Slater...

The Kronos Quartet — founded in Seattle, now based in San Francisco — has shaped modern classical music for more than 50 years. Their 2024 album Outer Spaceways Incorporated  reimagines the work of the trailblazing American jazz pianist, Sun Ra, featuring covers and collaborations with artists like Jlin, Armand Hammer, and others. In addition to recorded testimonials from Laraaji,...

Owain Davies received a message from a stranger in 2020 asking if he might have been the singer of a band called Panchiko more than two decades ago. As it turns out, he was — but they never put their music online. They just had seven demo tracks on CDs, but Panchiko never really broke out of their scene in central England at the time. Fast forward to 2025: Panchiko is back in action with the...

Merrill Garbus says the lyrics simply poured out of her mouth on several tracks for the new Tune-Yards album,  Better Dreaming . This time, she and her partner Nate Brenner trusted their gut more in the writing process. The record is heavily inspired by current events domestically and abroad, the ongoing fight for LGBTQ+ rights, and unexpected lessons from unexpectedly becoming a parent. &ldq...

Hiro Ama, born in Japan and based in London, plays drums in the indie pop band Teleman. In late 2024, he released his debut solo album,  Music for Peace and Harmony,  which leans heavily into the sounds of a 1980s Japanese synthesizer called Waraku, which literally means “peace and harmony” in Japanese. KEXP's Dusty Henry spoke with him shortly after the release.  &ldquo...

In this bonus episode, we hear from Martin Oldgoth, cofounder of  World Goth Day , in conversation with Sharlese, host of Mechanical Breakdown , about the holiday’s origin in 2009. What started as a sort of joke on BBC Radio 6 Music rapidly spread across the world as a celebration of goth culture, which is constantly evolving. And, no, you don’t have to wear black. “The goth...

Seattle-based musician Rocky Votolato has formed a new band called Suzzallo, who put out their debut album  The Quiet Year  earlier this year on Thirty Something Records. Through loud guitars and cathartic screaming, Suzzallo offers an outlet to help him grieve the loss of his child, Kienan, who died in a car accident in 2021. “Without a way to express this pain, it probably would...

Denver-based punk group Dead Pioneers recently released their second album,  PO$T AMERICAN , on Hassle Records. They’ve been opening for Pearl Jam on their U.S. tour this spring. KEXP’s Dusty Henry caught up with lead vocalist Gregg Deal to discuss the band’s rapid success, how their new album portrays disillusionment with modern America, and how the band reclaims and recont...

Emily Fox, host of A Deeper Listen and Sound & Vision, is taking maternity leave form now until the fall. Before she left, shared an essay about why she went to Las Vegas sober and 8 months pregnant to see Pitbull in concert and why she thinks Pitbull deserves “a deeper listen.” Best wishes to Emily and her family! In the meantime, the A Deeper Listen feed will continue to stay act...

SASAMI has just released a new pop album called  Blood on the Silver Screen . While her first record fell in the indie rock realm and her second album had a lot of metal influence, this album represents another left turn. SASAMI talks with Emily Fox about what draws her to make music from so many different genres, and how her family’s story of immigration and involvement in unconvention...

On this week’s episode, songwriter Ela Minus talks with KEXP's Albina Cabrera about her new album,  DÍA —a fully nomadic project with songs written and recorded between Mexico, Seattle, and her native Colombia. With  DÍA , she steps away from her analog era and embraces everything at hand: broken microphones, acoustic instruments, and digital synths. It’s...

Mike Hadreas of Perfume Genius talks with Emily Fox about how his inner fears, struggles with mental health, paranoid fantasies and reflections on gay lust and love show up on his latest album,  Glory . “I think I was just really afraid and I felt really tender and mortal and the world felt really fragile and scary and I couldn't figure out how to move through it very well,” Hadre...

Liz Pelly, author of Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist talks through the many practices at Spotify over the years that have impacted independent musicians-- from outsourcing stock music Spotify pays a lower royalty rate for and flooding Spotify's in-house playlists with that stock music, to paying artists a 30% lower royalty rate in exchange for promotion on S...