Jason McCue - When He Drinks

Tycho & Benjamin Gibbard - "Only Love," a 2021 single on Mom + Pop. Step aside, Jimmy Tamborello. Death Cab for Cutie frontman Benjamin Gibbard is lending his distinctive voice to a new electronic producer, Tycho (real name: Scott Hansen). In a press release, Hansen explained how the two came to collaborate: I had been a fan of Ben’s work for a long time when, in 2016, I had the chance to do a remix for Death Cab for Cutie’s track “The Ghosts of Beverly Drive.” Ben’s voice was a very inspiring element to work with from a production standpoint, I felt it really meshed well with the kinds of sounds and instrumentation I gravitate towards. ‘Only Love’ started life as an instrumental, but something was missing. I sent a rough demo to Ben and he recorded some vocals over it. The first time I heard the rough vocals the whole song suddenly made sense and the arrangement flowed out of that. After my early experimentations with vocals on Weather this felt like a great opportunity to put everything I had learned during that process into practice. It was certainly an honor to be able to work with such an iconic voice. Gibbard described how his lyrics came together: In 2014, while reading This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein, I came across a quote from Montanan goat rancher and environmentalist Alexis Bonogofsky that moved me immensely. Speaking about the fight to protect public lands in southeastern Montana from the mining company Arch Coal, she said: ‘(The) connection to this place and the love people have for it, that’s what Arch Coal doesn’t get. They underestimate that. They don’t understand it so they disregard it. And that’s what in the end will save that place. It’s not the hatred for the coal companies or anger, but love will save this place. When Scott sent me the music for ‘Only Love,’ it seemed perfect for this statement. Since reading Alexis’ words, I’ve carried them as a universal truth; that the only way we preserve the people, places or things we care for is with love, not hatred. This is often easier said than done, of course. But I find myself coming back to her statement as if it were a mantra. Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

13 Aug 20214min

Mac McCaughan - "Dawn Bends" from the 2021 album The Sound of Yourself on Merge. Superchunk frontman and Merge Records co-founder Mac McCaughan returns this fall with his second solo album, The Sound of Yourself. The release features a slew of guests including Mary Lattimore, Sabrina Ellis (A Giant Dog), TORRES' Mackenzie Scott, Telekinesis' Michael Benjamin Lerner, Annie Hayden, his brother Matt McCaughan, and on today's Song of the Day, drummer Jon Wurster and Yo La Tengo. ("I am aware of the irony of an album called The Sound Of Yourself with this many guests on it!," he shares in a press release.) Like many great albums coming out right now, The Sound Of Yourself came out of the lockdown. "Each day is blurring into the next, so what are we doing today?” he would ask himself during the pandemic. “How can I disrupt this? I think what resulted was a theme of subdued… ‘joy’ is the wrong word, but it’s at least comforting if not propulsive to have something open-ended to work on every day without any kind of structure or deadline or rules.” The Sound of Yourself will be out September 24th via Merge Records (of course). Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

12 Aug 20214min

Penelope Isles - "Sailing Still," a 2021 single on Bella Union. UK duo Penelope Isles — a project of siblings Lily and Jack Wolter — were able to use the pandemic lockdown to recover from the heavy touring they did for their 2018 debut album When The Tide Creeps In. “Before the enforced break due to COVID we spent pretty much all of 2019 driving ourselves around Europe and America having some incredible adventures as a band and it seems that everything since then has been falling apart," Jack explained in a press release. Today's Song of the Day finds the Wolters reconnecting during the break. “I wrote the music for this song at my brother’s flat, on a really crappy electric piano, but always envisioned the whole thing as something widescreen, with a big sound to match," Lily remembers. "The lyrics took me a few months to finish, by which point the song had taken on many different meanings. Then I took it to band practice, where Jack and I wrote the end section together. It’s one of our favourite sounding songs on the record. We played around with pitch-shifting instruments to get it sonically sweet. Plus, it was the first time we ever heard strings with our music. That’s one tick off the bucket list.” For the video, Jack wanted to travel again, at least visually. "Writing and recording the new album was a huge part of the recovery process and making this film for 'Sailing Still' I wanted Lily and I to get back on the road somehow, as travelling has been such a massive part of our band ever since we began. So I had this idea of filming Lily in a myriad of places and scenarios, both urban and rural, coastal and inland. Mountains and rivers, council flats and tunnels, cafes and bridges. We drove up and down the country for a week, sleeping in the van, and waking up at the crack of dawn to start filming again. Reconnecting as a ‘band’ again but also spending time together as brother and sister was special for filming this real heartbreaker of a song.” Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

11 Aug 20215min

Film School - "Superperfection" from the 2021 album We Weren’t Here on Sonic Ritual. Long-running west coast shoegaze group Film School return this fall with the full-length We Weren’t Here, a nod to pandemic-related conditions in which they recorded the album. Band members — bassist Justin LaBo, guitarist Nyles Lannon, frontman Greg Bertens, and keyboardist Jason Ruck — were divided between the Bay Area and Los Angeles, recording their parts from their respective home studios and then emailing files back and forth. We Weren’t Here will be released September 24th via Sonic Ritual. Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

10 Aug 20213min

Jarv Dee & Bad Colours - "Black Skin (feat. Stas THEE Boss)," a 2021 self-released single. Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

6 Aug 20212min

Skyzoo - "Bed-Stuy Is Burning" from the 2021 album All the Brilliant Things on Mello. New York has long been embedded in the work of rapper Skyzoo. Born Gregory Skyler Taylor in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, he cites his hometown as an influence, telling The Living Room, "There’s certain values and morals that come with the neighborhood and era that I grew up in. Those are important musically and just in life." However, he laments the gentrification of his city on today's Song of the Day and the album it comes from, the new LP All The Brilliant Things. He explains in a press release: With All The Brilliant Things, the idea was truly to try and tackle the realities of gentrification and this new era of cultural appropriation, commonly known as “culture vulturing”. The way they intertwine with one another, parallel at times, and how us as the residents of our long-standing homes and creators of these cultures have been stripped of it, or at times let it happen, all for what we assumed was our best interest. The irony of it all is, despite how it all makes us feel in hindsight, one would have to admit that the orchestration of it was truly brilliant. Brutal, and heinous, but somehow pretty brilliant. Hence the title of the album. The cover art, illustrated by Matt Rockefeller, shows my 3 year-old-son and I on the corner of Fulton St. and Franklin Ave. in Brooklyn, and I’m showing him a condo being built in our neighborhood, a neighborhood that’s rapidly dying, explaining it to him and trying to make sense of it all. Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

5 Aug 20215min

K.ZIA - "Sanctuary," a 2021 single on Groove Attack. Brussels-born, Berlin-based artist K.ZIA unveils a "place beyond the physical" in today's KEXP Song of the Day. Born to a Martinican father and a Belgo-Congolese mother, she weaves the influence of her upbringing into this soulful single. “I am building a realm for the unheard," she explained in a press release. "For the ones that never found boxes to fit in because of their differences. To be able to exist freely, we will have our own boundless space. A Sanctuary where together we rise around authenticity, depth and love. This song is about a special place where we can disconnect, connect, and reconnect with a special person, a spirit, a community, a divinity and re center around the essentials of Love.” Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

4 Aug 20213min

George Riley - "say yes (feat. Joe Armon-Jones)" from the 2021 self-released album interest rates, a tape. She may only be 23-years-old, but West London-based artist George Riley draws on her lifetime of influences on her latest release, interest rates, a tape. Her Jewish mother and Jamaican father would play R&B icons like Stevie Wonder, Aretha, and Sade in the house, and her dad was briefly a drummer and backing vocalist in '70s reggae group Steel Pulse. She channels all of that into interest rates, a tape, explaining to Crack Magazine, “This is me wanting to show the breadth of sounds that have inspired me, because I don’t subscribe to just one thing.” Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

3 Aug 20214min