In Our Headphones

Kassa Overall - “Darkness In My Mind” from I THINK I’M GOOD on Brownswood Recordings. Originally hailing from Seattle and now based out of New York, Kassa Overall has used his inimitable blend of jazz, hip-hop, and experimental leanings to explore heady and existential topics. With his latest record, I THINK I’M GOOD , he’s at his most personal and revealing. On the r...

Orion Sun - “mama’s baby,” a 2020 self-released single. Philadelphia-based songwriter Orion Sun’s latest single, “mama’s baby,” was written after experiencing police brutality during a protest earlier this year in late May. Thrown into the ground multiple times and her arm twisted, she left with not just physical injuries but emotional pain from the trauma...

Sampa The Great - “Time’s Up (Remix) feat. Junglepussy,” a 2020 single on Ninja Tune. While music can be healing, oftentimes the industry is quite the opposite. As Sampa The Great (aka Sampa Tembo) addresses on “Time’s Up,” it can be even more perilous for Black artists working against systemic racism within the industry.  “‘Time’s Up&rsqu...

Stas THEE Boss - “Rotary Style” from the 2020 EP Sang Stasia! on LucidHaus. Sang Stasia! , one of two outstanding EPs from the former Seattle resident and host of KEXP’s Street Sounds, was crafted from beats made for other singers but for some reason never recorded. The Black Constellation representative weaves her trademark multisyllabic rhymes over a cosmic sample looped to psy...

Seth Bogart - “Men on the Verge of Nothing” from Men on the Verge of Nothing on Wacky Wacko Records. Inspired in equal measure by Pedro Almodóvar and Poly Styrene, the artist formerly known as Hunx spins the former’s classic 1988 dark comedy (titled Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown ) into a treatise on the uselessness of male privilege. The album’s title tra...

STR4TA - "Aspects (Demus Dub)," a 2020 single on Brownswood Recordings. While 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic have kept us from dancing out our sorrows, artists and producers around the globe are still holing up in their studios to give us sensational, future dance floor hits. Case in point, the new Brit-Funk project STR4TA. The project’s debut single ‘Aspects’ was recorded in a L...

Nubya Garcia - "The Message Continues" from the 2020 album SOURCE on Concord. British jazz wunderkind Nubya Garcia made an awe-inspiring debut this year with her LP, ‘SOURCE.’ Her jazz bona fides and prowess are in full view with “The Message Continues,” a stirring instrumental that sees Garcia’s saxophone taking center stage amongst a wondrous fray of sensational dru...

Blue Hawaii - "Not My Boss!" from the 2020 EP Under 1 House on Arbutus Records. With one member in Berlin and one in Montreal, Blue Hawaii fuses together a globe-spanning dance party with each new record. “Not My Boss” from their latest release, ‘Under 1 House,’ finds the duo bringing together sultry synth pads with classic house rhythms and battlecry: “You’re n...

Antonioni - "Malcomer," a 2020 self-released single. Seattle’s Antonioni are on their way up! With a couple EPs under their belt, the indie band recently signed with Lauren Records and are on the verge of releasing their debut album. The latest single to be shared is “Malcomer,” a dark and dreamy odyssey that burns and builds with shimmering textures and showcases frontperson Sar...

Julia Jacklin - "to Perth, before the border closes," a 2020 single on Sub Pop. For some artists, the idea of being on the road and the constant change is a high unlike any other. Which would make the current situation with Covid-19 a difficult one, to say the least. Julia Jacklin is one of those artists and she expresses the idea of chasing the high of change via locale on last month’s &ldq...

MorMor - "Don't Cry," a 2020 single on Don't Guess Inc. For the past couple of years, Toronto’s MorMor (musician Seth Nyquist) has been crafting spellbindingly evocative music that has the power to cut your heart in two. Following up 2018’s Heaven’s Only Wishful EP and last year’s Some Place Else EP comes the single “Don’t Cry.” Pulsating with a feverish d...

Nilüfer Yanya - “Crash” from the 2020 Feeling Lucky? EP on ATO Records. After a momentous 2019 with her excellent, critically acclaimed debut ‘Miss Universe,’ Nilüfer Yanya is coming back for more. The English songwriter recently announced the ‘Feeling Lucky?’ EP, due out Dec. 11 through ATO Records. The first offering from the record comes with the an...

Loma - “Half Silences” from the 2020 album Don’t Shy Away on Sub Pop. Loma never anticipated going this far. The project began as an impromptu collaboration with songwriter Emily Cross, recording engineer Dan Duszynski, and Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg, converging to record their 2018 self-titled debut. After releasing the record and touring, each member intended to go bac...

Weep Wave - "Bury the Bones," a 2020 self-released single. If you've been missing the casual acquaintanceship of neighborhood pups during the quarantine, you are not alone. Local psych-rock trio Weep Wave feel your pain.  “I started missing it being socially acceptable to approach strangers with dogs," frontman Dylan Fuentes admitted to Melted Magazine . "I do not have a dog of my own s...

Beabadoobee - "Sorry" from the 2020 album Fake It Flowers on Dirty Hit. Last month, British-based singer/songwriter Beabadoobee (real name: Bea Kristi) released her full-length debut Fake It Flowers , and it fulfilled all the anticipation that began brewing with her earlier EPs. "Fake It Flowers is pretty much my whole life in one album," she told i-D Magazine . "People are gonna know a lot, and i...

The Churchhill Garden - "birds," a 2020 self-released single.  Under the stay-at-home order, many bands have taken to the internet in order to create and record new music, e-mailing each other files and rehearsing via Zoom calls. But for shoegaze duo The Churchhill Garden , collaborating across the ocean has long been their modus operandi. Vocalist Krissy Vanderwoude explained the process to...

TV Priest - "This Island" from the 2021 album Uppers on Sub Pop. With today's Song of the Day, London-based post-punk quartet TV Priest share an early look at their forthcoming full-length Uppers , out February 5th via Sub Pop. In a press statement, frontman Charlie Drinkwater calls the track "an unrequited love letter, and a howl of frustration; a mea culpa and a call to arms." He adds: "'This Is...

Ghost of Vroom - "Rona Pollona" from the 2020 Ghost of Vroom 2 EP on Mod y Vi Records. Back in the '90s, NYC-based band Soul Coughing combined improvisational jazz with samples and the stream-of-consciousness poetry of frontman Mike Doughty. Decades later, Doughty returns with Ghost of Vroom (the band name a nod to SC's debut 1994 album Ruby Vroom ), a project with bassist and longtime collaborato...

J'Von - "cnn" from the 2020 album THUNDERBOY on PLZCOMEAGAIN. Seattle's own J'Von returned last month with his latest LP of lo-fi hip-hop titled Thunderboy . True to his history of multidisciplinary approach , J'Von wrote, arranged, produced, recorded, and mixed the album himself (with one track co-produced by grady), as well as created all the art, characters, and animations.  Read the full...

Dave B - "Worthy," a 2020 self-released single. With his single "Worthy," Renton, WA-based rapper Dave B wanted to remind the Black community that they are worthy of love and respect.  "A lot of people post their black squares and do what they do and they get to throw it to the side they don't have to live it," he said to King 5 News . "We have to wake up every day and start to do this. I got...

Quetzal - "Justice Never Dies," a 2020 self-released single. As we rebuild the world around us As others still fight and die We keep doing all we can “We don’t just survive We wanna thrive!” Since forming in the early '90s, East L.A.-based band Quetzal have long used their musical platform to speak out about social justice and education. Frontwoman Martha Gonzalez is an associate...

Tiffany Wilson - "America (feat. Lady Tasz & Vitamin D)," a 2020 single on Loosegroove Records. You know a song is good when it brings a record label out of a twenty year hiatus, which is just what happened with Tiffany Wilson and Loosegroove Records, a label founded by Stone Gossard (Pearl Jam) and Regan Hagar (Malfunkshun, Brad). Based in Seattle, Wilson is also a former member of local gosp...

Sa-Roc - "The Black Renaissance (feat. Black Thought)" from the 2020 album The Sharecropper's Daughter on Rhymesayers. The first time Sa-Roc met Black Thought of The Roots, he was pulling her up on stage at the 2014 A3C Hip Hop Festival in front of tens of thousands of people.  “We had a mutual friend who’s close to him and had been sharing music or whatever," the Atlanta-based MC...

Rell Be Free - "Paythefeee" from the 2020 self-released album P.T.F.D. Rell Be Free (real name: Jerrell Davis) is a self-described "musician, underground educator, and multifaceted entrepreneur" from the South End of Seattle. A rapper since the age of 12, Davis utilizes his skills to speak out for social justice. He's the Restorative Justice Director and co-founder of the youth organization WA-BLO...

Harleighblu & Bluestaeb - "Queeen Dem (feat. Janne Robinson)" from the 2019 self-released album She. British R&B vocalist Harleighblu teams up with German producer Bluestaeb on the collaborative album She . On today's Song of the Day, the duo find inspiration in the poetry of Janne Robinson. Harleighblu told Highsnobiety in an email: I wrote the track Queeen Dem (pronounced like ManDem), a...