Camp Saint Helene - Farfisa Song

Jitwam - "The Get Down" from the 2022 album Third on Roya Records. As KEXP's DJ Alex mentioned in 2018 when Jitwam contributed a Midnight in a Perfect World mix to us, "Jitwam is a bit of an enigma. He was born in Northeast India, he's currently based in Brooklyn, he spent his formative years in New Zealand and Australia, and has lived in monasteries in Thailand, orphanages in South Africa, and washed out apartments in London." On his third album — helpfully titled Third — Jitwam focuses on nights in London and New York, specifically, while still infusing a lifetime of global influences into his rich tapestry of disco-funk. Today's Song of the Day is such a fast-paced dance delight, you can almost picture the Soul Train dancers doing one of their infamous line dances to it.  As he told Mixmag, "Being a diaspora kid, Third, for me, also has a lot of references to third culture. I’m trying to blur the lines between what we think of as different cultures, rhythms, and genres, and show that despite how different these genres are — or how different we are as people — we’re all grounded in the same drumbeat really." Read the full story at KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

5 Sep 20223min

Franklin Gothic - Mr. Hangman from the 2022 album Into the Light on #veryjazzed. Franklin Gothic is the solo project of Portland-based artist Jay DiBartolo. In August, he released his debut record Into the Light via split release with Very Jazzed ad Pleasure Tapes. Made in collaboration with producer/local luminary Erik Blood (Shabazz Palaces, Tacocat, Pickwick), the album covers a variety of genres including ‘90s indie, Americana, and shoegaze for a dynamic and colorful listen. Our Song of the Day is the early single “Mr. Hangman.” Influenced by DiBartolo’s childhood and using the game Hangman as an analogy for feeling cut off from the world and left hanging, the song is, conversely, one of the more vibrant tunes on the record. DiBartolo had this to say about the song: "The original version we intended to record for "Mr. Hangman" was this sweet, little boppy tune, which had been bugging me because it felt inauthentic. After laying down the drums in the studio, I took the song back home and experimented a bit on guitar by noodling with various phrasings over the existing chord progression. That's when this dissonant feeling emerged that juxtaposed the original version and captured what the song's about. I sent it to Erik and he replied back with a champagne emoji, so I knew that was it." The song comes with a glitchy VHS-style video directed by Sean McGuirk. Watch it and read the full post at KEXP.org.Support the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

2 Sep 20223min

Brijean - Take A Trip from the 2022 album Angelo on Ghostly International. Vocalist/percussionist Brijean Murphy and producer/multi-instrumentalist Doug Stuart have been making sweltering groovy soundscapes as Brijean since 2019 and recently followed up their 2021 full-length Feelings with the EP Angelo. Named after their 1981 Toyota Celica, Angelo was born out of a period of immense grief, in which the duo leaned heavily on each other and music as a way to cope. Our Song of the Day “Take a Trip” celebrates those moments of cruising windows-down, as well as the more psychedelic types of trips, in which the journey is through the mind. “Travel with me down, down, down /Hear the colors, taste the sounds /Through the window, out the door /Spaces in my mind I've never seen before,” coos Murphy. A meandering bassline leads the scorchingly sunny song while a bevy of sounds including hand-claps, cuíca hiccups, whip-cracks, even a horse neigh add color to the already-heated track. “This song is an inquiry into shifting perspectives—a way to deepen our lived experience by becoming aware of the unexplored facets of our own perception,” says the duo of “Take a Trip” which comes with a music video from Nathan Castiel inspired by Dreamcast-era video games that interplays lo-fi 3D animation with the warmth of 16mm film. Watch the video and read the full post at KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

1 Sep 20222min

Flying Lotus - "You Don’t Know (feat. Devin Tracy)" from the 2022 album The Room on Warp Records. DJ/producer Flying Lotus teams up with soul singer Devin Tracy for today's Song of the Day, a laid back summer-y groove perfect for these final days of the season.  FlyLo's been busy this year: he wrote the theme song to the AppleTV+ Magic Johnson documentary series, They Call Me Magic, and wrote the score for Netflix's YASUKE anime series. He's currently working on his second film, titled Ash. The film was written by Jonni Remler and focuses on a woman who "wakes up on a distant planet and finds the crew of her space station viciously killed, her investigation into what happened setting in motion a terrifying chain of events." In addition to directing, Flying Lotus will also compose the score.  Read the full story at KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

31 Aug 20222min

Yaya Bey - "alright" from the 2022 album Remember Your North Star on Big Dada. On her latest LP, Remember Your North Star, Brooklyn-based artist Yaya Bey explores the themes of Black womanhood against a mix of R&B, jazz, reggae, and hip-hop. "I saw a tweet that said, "Black women have never seen healthy love or have been loved in a healthy way." That's a deep wound for us," she stated in a press release. "Then I started to think about our responses to that as Black women. So this album is kind of my thesis. Even though we need to be all these different types of women, ultimately we do want love: love of self and love from our community. The album is a reminder of that goal." Read the full story at KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

30 Aug 20223min

Santigold - "High Priestess" from the 2022 album Spirituals on Little Jerk. Santigold returns with a vengeance for Spirituals, her first new full-length in six years.  She explains in a press release, "I loved the idea of calling it Spirituals because it touched on the idea of Negro spirituals, which were songs that served the purpose of getting Black people through the un-get-throughable. In the absence of physical freedom, spirituals have traditionally been music whose sound and physical performance allow its participants to feel transcendental freedom in the moment. That’s what this record did for me." Today's Song of the Day came out of a collaboration with Ray Brady and Boys Noize, with additional creative contributions from Psymun and Gayngs’ Ryan Olson.  Read the full story at KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

29 Aug 20223min

Slang - Chipped Tooth from the 2022 album Cockroach In A Ghost Town on Kill Rock Stars. In one of the most ultimate Northwest powergroup collaborations to come in recent history, Slang seemingly appeared out of nowhere. In fact, Drew Grow and Janet Weiss (the latter needing no introduction and Grow being a IYKYK frontman of Modern Kin and the Pastors’ Wives and in-demand producer) have been slowly working on Slang for over a decade. Bringing with them a bevy of notable names for their first record Cockroach In a Ghost Town, including Kathy Foster (Roseblood, The Thermals) on bass and Anita Lee Elliot (Viva Voce) as well as appearances from Sam Coomes (Quasi), Stephen Malkmus (Pavement), and Mary Timony (Helium, Ex Hex, Wild Flag), it’s a who’s who of the Northwest Gen X scene. Our Song of the Day, “Chipped Tooth,” is an existentialist viewpoint of examining all the rough edges of yourself - be it your ragged brain, running wild with thoughts that slip into darkness quicker than you’d like, or the jagged points of a chipped tooth - always existing but not always noticeable until it’s the only part of you that you can think about. “I think it’s more our mutual appreciation of music that grabs you and grabs hold and shakes you to the core,” explained Weiss to KEXP’s Eva Walker during their in-studio recorded in July. “I think we feel like this band has that potential to kind of get inside a person a give them strength and hope and just a joie de vive. Things get really hard and I feel like music is our saving grace so we all kind of look to music to lift us up.” Watch said in-studio and read the full post at KEXP.org.Support the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

26 Aug 20222min

The Beths - Silence is Golden from the 2022 album Expert in a Dying Field on Carpark. New Zealand indie pop outfit The Beths are on the verge of dropping their highly anticipated third record Expert in a Dying Field on September 16th via Carpark Records. The follow-up to 2020’s Jump Rope Gazers sees the band delve into character sketches of relationships and their aftermaths, with an emphasis on the aftermath. Our Song of the Day is the single “Silence Is Golden.” Frontwoman Elizabeth Stokes spews lines at a brisk clip, nimbly quipping lines like, "I wish that I could freeze time, go to the wild, soak up the quiet / Till I'm dripping wet with it / Then I would drive home, go to my room, wring myself out / That would be the end of it." According to the band, the song conveys the, "stress and anxiety manifesting as an intolerance to noise, where each new sound makes you more and more stressed.” With fuzzy guitars and a screeching guitar solo contrasting that message, the song is a roaring and nervy antidote to silence. While silence may be golden, a Beths song gleams just as bright. Watch the video for “Silence Is Golden" and read the full post at KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

25 Aug 20222min