Bandsplain

Emerging from Seattle’s early 90s grunge landscape, Sunny Day Real Estate became legends of an emerging midwestern emo sound that began to redefine the boundaries of the genre. Meeting us there in the blue where the words are not is writer and podcaster Ian Cohen. Follow Ian Cohen on Twitter @en_cohen and listen to his podcast Indiecast @Indiecast1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastch...

Rolling Stone writer and author Rob Sheffield joins us to dissect the long, storied history of the legendary Big Star, a band with a handful of records and an indelible legacy that reaches beyond the decades of their origin.   Follow Rob Sheffield on Twitter @robsheff Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Offspring were one in a wave of southern California bands that ushered in a renewed interest in punk rock to the ears of the masses, becoming one of the best-selling punk rock bands of all time and here to help us come out and play is SPIN Editorial Director, Daniel Kohn. Follow Daniel Kohn on Twitter at @danielkohn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Third Eye Blind may have doot-doot-dooted their way to late 90s radio ubiquity, but there’s so much more to the story. Chris Black returns for a reconsideration of the earworm songwriting and complex lore of the singular Stephen Jenkins. Follow Chris Black on Twitter at @donetodeath. Subscribe to How Long Gone on Spotify  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rob Harvilla and Yasi continue their epic trek through the Smashing Pumpkins story post-1993’s Siamese Dream, in which the Pumpkins transcend 1990s alt rock cultishness into rock phenom status with their opus double-album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Follow Rob Harvilla at @harvilla on Twitter and listen to his The Ringer podcast, 60 Songs That Explain the 90s. Learn more about your ad...

Rob Harvilla joins us for the noble effort of explaining The Smashing Pumpkins, one of the most commercially successful and musically impactful rock bands of the 1990s. Yasi and Rob cover the first half of the band’s breakthrough career and comb through the origin story of Billy Corgan’s emergent and unusual celebrity. Follow Rob Harvilla at @harvilla on Twitter and listen to his The Ringer podcas...

Bandsplain is back babe and we are now part of The Ringer Podcast Network. New episodes start Thursday September 29th.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bad Brains were one of the most influential hardcore bands of all time, from inventing moshing to being groundbreaking black punks who injected hardcore with a Rastafarian philosophy and reggae influence. Though they were “banned in DC,” they built the foundation for hardcore and the history of punk to come. Photographer and unofficial mayor of LA Atiba Jefferson brings his lifelong fandom to the...

Ann Powers returns for part 2 of PJ Harvey, covering the next period of Harvey’s prolific career—from To Bring You My Love on—which was punctuated by confident creative expansions, big-hitting collaborations, flirtations with pop success, and continued artistic investigations into riveting subjects. Follow Ann Powers on Twitter at @annkpowers, and find her latest book, Good Booty: Love and Sex, Bl...

For Yasi’s birthday, she can have a two-part PJ Harvey episode as a treat. Ann Powers of NPR Music is welcomed back to Bandsplain to dissect the lauded work and cinematic life of Polly Jean Harvey, who Ann calls “the artiest rock star of the late 20th century” and a vector for deep discussions on gender, sexuality, mysticism, myth-making, and art. Follow Ann Powers on Twitter at @annkpowers, and f...

Neutral Milk Hotel released only two studio albums in the mid-to-late 90s, On Avery Island and In An Aeroplane Over the Sea, but they’ve since been consecrated as quintessential indie rock classics. Emerging from the Elephant 6 musical collective, bandleader Jeff Mangum led this eccentric musical experiment that left much mystery, and a large cult following, in its wake. This week, Wall Street Jou...

In the mid-70s, four not-so-typical teenage girls came barreling into the nascent UK punk scene. The Slits split in the early 80s, but their impact on punk was profound and foundational. Zoë Howe, author of Typical Girls, the Story of the Slits, joins Yasi to talk about the revolution of the Slits. Follow Zoë Howe on Twitter @ladyzoe2dots, and check out her book, Typical Girls, the Story of the Sl...

Primus, led by bass-slappin’ virtuoso Les Claypool, emerged from the Bay Area’s funk-punk-metal hybrid scene of the late 80s and 90s, to become a textbook cult band—you either love ‘em or hate ‘em. Music journalist Christopher Weingarten makes the case for the true cult fandom of Primus and the oddball, arty genius of Les Claypool. Follow Christopher Weingarten on Twitter @1000TimesYes and pick up...

Operation Ivy was likely your favorite band’s favorite band, and Corbett Redford, director of the documentary Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk, tells us why. These teenage pioneers of ska-inflected punk were a flagship band of Berkeley’s 924 Gilman scene in the mid 1980s, releasing only one full length that galvanized a scene and several generations of future punks. Follow Corbett Redfor...

Pitchfork’s Quinn Moreland joins us to explain the reverberations of Jenny Lewis’s reign as the queen of 2000s indie rock with her band of Los Angeles darlings, Rilo Kiley. Follow Quinn Moreland on Twitter at @quinnmoreland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We’re back with Cole Cuchna, host of Dissect and Key Notes, for Part 2 of Radiohead, starting from their revolutionary 2000 album Kid A through their continuing evolution both as a band and as individual artists. Steven Hyden, author of This Isn’t Happening: Radiohead’s Kid A and the Beginning of the 21st Century, also joins us for an examination of Kid A’s impact on music criticism and the album’...

Cole Cuchna, host of Dissect and Key Notes, brings his keyboard to Bandsplain for Part 1 of our deep dive into the history, music theory, and immense, innovative impact Radiohead has had on music at large. Covering their first era, Cole and Yasi take us through the band’s Oxford origins, to how they grappled with and later defied Creep’s one-hit-wonder status, all the way up to their groundbreakin...

Once again, Yasi and Producer Dylan take a little breather from the 60 page Google Docs and 5 hour episodes to answer your burning questions, including: the making of Bandsplain, what bands we’re listening to now, and why we haven’t done Guided By Voices yet. Special shout out to our Gen Z listeners who called in, you are very cool. Check out the artists Yasi and Dylan recommended in this episode:...

A major figure in the cool girl canon, Liz Phair broke through Chicago’s indie rock scene (and its politics) with her seminal 1993 debut, Exile in Guyville, setting her off on a fearlessly confessional path of continual, defiant self-reinvention. Writer Niko Stratis talks with Yasi about Liz Phair’s bold songwriting and boundary-pushing across the worlds of provincial indie rock and chart-topping...

In honor of 3/11 day, we present to you: 311. Purveyors of positivity as well as amber-colored energies, 311’s extensive career gets a thorough and loving look from writer and known Excitable, Marty Sartini Garner. Follow Marty Sartini Garner at @mrrrty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Songwriter laureate of Los Angeles Randy Newman gets explained by the Valley’s own Molly Lambert. Infinitely more prolific, and controversial, than his common image suggests as the “I Love LA” and Toy Story theme song guy, Molly takes Yasi on a tour of his extensive and complex oeuvre as Hollywood songman. Follow Molly Lambert at @mollylambert. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoice...

Sublime, the ultimate legacy band for stoner kids everywhere, get explained by return guest Jeff Weiss. Jeff joins Yasi to make the case on how Sublime’s Long Beach heritage and their of-its-time infusions of ska, punk, rock, and reggae made them a ubiquitous Southern Californian musical export, even after singer Bradley Newell’s passing in 1996. Follow Jeff Weiss at @passionweiss and check out Th...

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan joins us for a long-awaited Bandsplain on one of Yasi’s all-time favorite bands: Pavement. Steeped in Californian suburban ennui, the casual, scruffy brilliance of Pavement pierced through the indie rock heyday of the post-grunge 90s to make them one of the most enduring rock bands from that moment. Follow Chris Ryan on Twitter at @ChrisRyan77 and check out his Ringer podca...

Minutemen from San Pedro, CA were a band of childhood soulmates whose experimental sound, working class roots, and lucid politics made them all-timers in the history of punk. Joe Gross returns to highlight Minutemen’s DIY ethos of “jamming econo,” and the timeless influence they had on the whole of independent music that came after them. Follow Joe Gross on Twitter at @joegross and pick up his 33...

Geoff Rickly from Thursday guides us through the extended universe of Trent Reznor, who took the pulse and grit of industrial music into the mainstream with NIИ’s 1989 debut, Pretty Hate Machine, and became one of rock’s darkest and most impactful innovators of the next few decades. Follow Geoff Rickly on Twitter at @GeoffRickly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices