In Our Headphones

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs - “When the Lights Go” from the 2022 album When the Lights Go on Nice Age. Over the past decade, Orlando Higginbottom has been thriving under the name Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs . The British producer scored a Grammy nomination for his collaboration with Bonobo, and has released several singles and EPs since his 2012 debut LP Trouble . Ten years later, he...

United Freedom Collective - “MERCY (feat. FACESOUL)” from the 2022 Am Ta EP on Dama Dama. At the core of the United Freedom Collective are three musicians: Mathieu Seynaeve, WaiFung Tsang, and Robbie Redway. The trio convened in a remote barn in Cornwall, in South West England, to create music inspired by Zen Taoism, Buddhism, Jungian analysis, meditation, yoga, and more. “It’s supposed to be some...

Bill Callahan - “Coyotes” from the 2022 album YTI⅃AƎЯ on Drag City. Singer/songwriter  Bill Callahan is shaking up reality — literally, with the backwards title of his latest LP,  YTILAER , out now via his long-time label Drag City.  “It felt like it was necessary to rouse people — rouse their love, their kindness, their anger, rouse anything in them. Get their senses working again,” he shared in...

Grynch Paper Route (feat. Sir Mix‐A‐Lot) from the 2022 self-released album Born in '86 . Nearly fifteen years after dropping his debut full-length, My Second Wind , Grynch is back with his first solo record since 2014 titled Born in ‘86 . While it may be a solo record, that doesn’t mean the Seattle-born-and-bred rapper isn’t still open to sharing the mic. The deeply collaborative artist invited ar...

4348 Kevin Cole Thursday 10/27/22 Bosq Song for Ehi (feat. The Ibibio Horns and Kaleta) a 2022 single on Canopy Limited. Bosq is the musical pseudonym for Benjamin Woods, who has been utilizing Afro-Latin music in fusion with Funk, Disco, Reggae, House and Hip Hop to dazzling effect for a decade now. The Boston-bred, Colombia-based musician has released 4 full albums, heaps of EP's of original mus...

You Said Strange - "So Sorry" from the 2021 album Thousand Shadows Vol.1 on Le Cèpe Records / Modulor. For their debut album ,  Salvation Prayer , the French band You Said Strange recorded in Portland with Dandy Warhols guitarist Peter G Holmström. For they're latest LP, titled  Thousand Shadows Vol​.​1 , they hunkered down at home, building their own studio in Évreux, equipped with a vintage anal...

Love'n'joy - "Psy Summer" from the 2022 self-released album Half Home . Kyiv-based band Love’n’Joy completed their latest album Half Home just three days before the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Vocalist/guitarist Anton Pushkar explained to Psychdelic Baby Magazine , "The idea of ​​the album title was mainly connected with the loss of Crimea, the place where me and Sergey (Z...

Elsy Wameyo - "River Nile" from the 2022 Nilotic EP on Music in Exile. Over the past few years, Nairobi-born, Adelaide-based artist  Elsy Wameyo has made a name for herself in hip-hop, garnering both the Young Kenyan of the Year award in 2018, and the People's Choice Best Hip Hop Award at the annual South Australian Music Awards in 2019. Her debut EP, titled  Nilotic , is a tribute to her indigeno...

Enumclaw - "Jimmy Neutron" from the 2022 album Save the Baby on Luminelle Recordings. It can often be tough to trace exactly where and when a band “broke” but for Enumclaw , it’s pretty straightforward. KEXP’s own Martin Douglas first wrote about the Tacoma band on KEXP’s website and, shortly after, major publications like Pitchfork, Stereogum, Gorilla vs. Bear, and The Fader followed suit. So, fo...

Cheekface - "I Feel So Weird!" from the 2022 album Too Much To Ask on New Professor. In times like we’ve been living through the past handful of years, humor has become more and more tantamount to survival. Cheekface understands that and displays it with aplomb. The Los Angeles-based band made up of Greg Katz, Amanda Tannen, Mark “Echo” Edwards channels Lou Reed, Jonathan Richman, and Stephan Malk...

PVA - "Untethered" from the 2022 album BLUSH on Ninja Tune. South London trio PVA have gained a reputation for their live sets, with their dark, industrial-tinged dance music and frontwoman Ella Harris' deadpan vocals. (Early in their career, the band came up with the term “country-friend techno” to describe their sound.) With their debut LP BLUSH , the group channels the raw energy of their shows...

Benedek - "Emotional (feat. Devin Morrison)" from the 2022 Zebrano EP on Apron Records. Los Angeles-based producer/musician Benedek (real name: Nicholas Benedek) began playing guitar at the age of nine, and first started composing beats using his Nintendo Game Boy Camera software. With admiration for artists like Herbie Hancock and Jeff Beck, he's developed a unique style drawing from funk, hip-ho...

STR4TA - "Turn Me Around" from the 2022 album STR4TASFEAR on Brownswood. Just before the world shut down in 2020, renowned DJ/record label owner Gilles Peterson joined acid jazz legend Jean-Paul Maunick (better known as "Bluey") for an improvised jam session in Bluey's parents’ garden shed in London. The result became STR4TA , and last year's debut LP, Aspects , draws influence from the '70s/'80s...

Snotty Nose Rez Kids, Taabu, Shad - Red Sky at Night - Remix a 2022 single on Distorted Muse. Snotty Nose Rez Kids are a Polaris and Juno Award-nominated indigenous hip hop duo that are beacons amongst their community for addressing the generational trauma affecting indigenous people with wit, humor, and bars for days. Their most recent album Life After dropped in 2021 but recently they unveiled a...

Bobby Sanchez - Trans 101 (Scarim) from the 2022 Prophecy EP on Harawiq Records. Bobby Sanchez carries a plethora of identities on their shoulders - poet, musician, painter, model, activist. The American-Peruvian Indigenous artist is vocal about speaking on the topics close to their heart such as Indigenous displacement, gentrification, environmentalism, and gender identity. Their most recent EP P...

Byron Nicholai - "Tengauryugtua (I Want To Fly)" from the 2022 album Ayagnera (The Beginning) on Tuallu Entertainment. Back in 2014, a young Byron Nicholai went viral when he began posting videos of himself singing in the Indigenous Yup'ik language on Facebook. The media even dubbed him the "Justin Bieber of Alaska."  Since then, he's relocated from the coastal town of Toksook Bay to Anchorage, to...

Digging Roots - "Tall Grass" from the 2022 album Zhawenim on Ishkōdé Records. Canadian duo Digging Roots returned this summer with their fourth LP Zhawenim. Since 2004, the husband-and-wife team of Raven Kanatakta Polson-Lahache and Sho-Shona Kish have crafted an award-winning blend of folk, hip-hop, and more with traditional Indigenous music. (Sho-Shona is Anishinabe, from Batchewana First Nation...

Mare Advertencia - "Escribiendo La Historia" from the 2022 Siempreviva EP on Derretida Ent / MuyMAL. An Indigenous Zapotec artist, rapper and activist Mare Advertencia Lirika has been using her voice to amplify underrepresented communities since she burst onto the scene in 2003 alongside Dj TBear. "My life context has taught me that I can use my voice,” she told Refinery 29 last year, “And maybe t...

TeZATalks - Lex Luthor a 2022 self-released single. Since 2016, TeZATalks has been enchanting fans with her unique genre-blending sound that explores electronic, hip-hop, metal, and dark pop in bewitching fashion. The self-described “Hard-Core Popstar” was born in Oahu but calls Seattle home and we’re more than happy to have her represent the diversity of music that breeds here. “Lex Luther” is th...

Disq - "Cujo Kiddies" from the 2022 album Desperately Imagining Someplace Quiet on Saddle Creek. Wisconsin-based quintet Disq are releasing their sophomore record Desperately Imagining Someplace Quiet this Friday two years after dropping their debut Collector . Our Song of the Day and the album’s lead single “Cujo Kiddies” emphasizes the band’s ability to craft eclectic art rock but is also a deep...

Miss Grit - "Like You," a 2022 single on Mute. New York-based, Korean-American artist Miss Grit (real name: Margaret Sohn) shares the new single "Like You," her first track released since signing to Mute Records. “Mute is one of the labels I put on a pedestal in my mind, so the fact I was even on their radar was really flattering,” Sohn said in a press release. “And then to think they believed in...

Ty Segall - "Distraction" from the 2022 album "Hello, Hi" on Drag City. From glam rock to garage to experimental noise,  Ty Segall has covered it all over his 14-album discography. On his latest, titled  “Hello, Hi” , he takes an intimate acoustic approach to songs that gestated during the pandemic. The album title itself acknowledges the strange isolation of that period, and how he missed just ta...

MorMor - "Seasons Change," a 2022 single on Don't Guess / AWAL. On today's Song of the Day, Toronto-based artist MorMor (real name: Seth Nyquist) encourages listeners to seize the day. "I won't leave it to fate / as seasons change," he sings against a laid-back, electro-pop groove, reminiscent of fellow Canadians Broken Social Scene. "‘Seasons Change’ is a song about the constraints of time," he e...

Cumulus - "Sunbeam" from the 2022 album Something Brighter on Share It Music. KEXP’s love and respect for Cumulus has been at least a decade in the making, spanning before the release of their 2013 debut I Never Meant to Be Like This . Back in 2018, our coverage of Cumulus’ sophomore record Comfort World was glowing and persistent,  and for good reason. Alexandra Lockhart (née Niedzialkowski)’s ab...

Big Joanie - "In My Arms" from the 2022 album Back Home on Kill Rock Stars. British punk trio and International Clash Day alums Big Joanie are releasing this sophomore record Back Home on November 4th via Thurston Moore and Eva Prinz’s Daydream Library Series (UK) and Kill Rock Stars in the US. Ahead of its release, they’ve dropped a string of singles including “Happier Still” and our Song of the...