Briston Maroney - Under My Skin

Naked Giants - "Take A Chance" from the 2020 album The Shadow on New West Records. Seattle trio Naked Giants return this month with their sophomore album The Shadow, an album they say is "much more honest" than their 2018 debut full-length SLUFF. “We’ve come to realize that the path to becoming a better person and bringing positivity into the world isn’t always linear, and there’s a lot of growth in taking an honest look at the “shadow-y” parts of life,” they told Spin Magazine. “Whether it’s personal anxiety and depression or collective guilt and trauma, there’s always a part of yourself that’s hard to confront and understand. But The Shadow is all about facing that darkness and having the strength to bring it into the light.” As for today's Song of the Day, the guys call it, “...a new step in the dance-the-stress-away attitude we’ve had since the band was formed. This time around it’s a bit more focused – we’re exploring these big unanswered questions in our lives, like the mechanisms of privilege and oppression or the capitalist oxymoron of individualism and assimilation, and we’re pairing it all with a danceable backbeat to tell people it’s ok to get up off the couch and do something about it.” Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

4 Sep 20202min

Widowspeak - "Even True Love" from the 2020 album Plum on Captured Tracks. On their fifth full-length Plum, Brooklyn band Widowspeak continue to craft a dreamy folk-pop sound, punctuated by vocalist (and former Tacoma, WA native) Molly Hamilton's serenely-sweet vocals. In a press release, Hamilton shared: "Prior to writing “Even True Love,” I’d been sitting with some existential dread for the last year or so; honestly, sort of overwhelmed by the recognition that life is absurd and finite. The song itself is upbeat, kind of cruising. I was thinking about those youth-glorifying “yolo” type songs and that big mood, but also feeling like there’s so much more to it than that. Maybe because they only live once, humans tend to want to possess things: objects, success, money, experiences, people. True Love. Amassing the most and best of whatever while you can. But that never really landed with me; I think this one is more about being present with the unknown, letting things go a little more, trying not to hold on too tight." Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

3 Sep 20204min

Songhoy Blues - "Worry" from the 2020 album Optimisme on Fat Possum Records. Malian rock band Songhoy Blues have entranced us with their modern take on traditional West African music since their 2015 debut album Music In Exile. And now, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, the band have released their first song ever sung entirely in English. In an interview with KEXP, vocalist Aliou Touré told us: "We need hope. We need to come together. And when we get worried, there's no way to think positive. So we don't have to be worried, we don't need that bad energy around us. Otherwise, we're not going to be able to go through this situation we are in. So that's why we wrote this song. Who can talk to everybody to keep their self-control. To not get worried and then we can be optimists together." Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

2 Sep 20203min

TARA - "Oceans," a 2020 self-released single. Even though they've only been together for a few years, Brooklyn quintet TARA have quickly coalesced their different musical backgrounds into the cohesive shoegaze-influenced sound they've displayed on the handful of singles they've released so far, including today's featured track "Oceans." After relocating to New York from California, guitarist/vocalist Saagar Kurani met another west coast transplant, guitarist/vocalist Wesley Deimling. They added Jack Weiss, Alexa Garay, and Stephen Kingslow to the line-up and proceeded to share their first set of singles last summer. The band shared the background of today's Song of the Day with KEXP: Our intent was to create a sound pallet which makes you feeling nostalgic for a place you've never been. Old but still new. The lyrics are inspired by Alexa's really good friend and visual artist, Sarah N--. Alexa states: 'swirling guitars and crescendos meant to deliver our exhausted selves to places wide open and far away, a song on the theme of dreams, full tide pools, Wuthering Heights, and lightness and fluttering during amid wild storms and turbulence. This fluttering of wings for soothing, for us, for us, for you, for all of us in wearying times, for Sarah.' Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

1 Sep 20205min

Eep - "Hogar" from the 2020 self-released album Death of a Very Good Machine. With the song "Hogar," 52-year-old musician Rosie Varela launched a lifelong dream. Though she's been writing songs for over twenty years, it wasn't until she wrote this love song for her husband that she reached out to Ross Ingram, who owns Brainville Studios in Sunland Park, New Mexico. “I asked him if he thought it was silly to want to record a shoegaze song at my age,” she admitted to the blog Noise Artists. Instead, Ingram helped Varela assemble the band EEP, not only recording her ode to her spouse, but seven additional shimmery songs that encompass their full-length debut Death of a Very Good Machine, released last month. Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

31 Aug 20202min

Cumulus & Little Wins - "Doorway," a 2020 self-released single. Little Wins is the solo project of songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Andrew Vait, also of Seattle duo SISTERS. And Cumulus is the songwriting project of Seattle's own Alexandra Niedzialkowski. Before Vait moved away to California, the two teamed up to create this song. "This song is about no-one and everyone; a collage of all the people in our life we wish we had more time with, or another chance to say all the things we should have said," Niedzialkowski explained on her Facebook page. "Originally a song about missing someone from the past, it does feel like the song took on new meaning as the world turned upside down these last few months. So much of the country is sitting indoors, grappling with the reality outside our homes, waiting for the day we can hear a friend knock on the door again," she continued. She added, "Don’t actually go knocking on doors right now, but if you miss someone, let them know. Give them a call, send them a message, don’t regret the things you never said." Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

28 Aug 20203min

Pure X - "Angels of Love" from the 2020 album Pure X on Fire Talk Records. It's been six years, but Austin-based band Pure X have returned with their fourth full-length, their first since 2014's Angel. The new self-titled release was written over the past three years with band members working on their parts remotely from their respective homes before reuniting to record live over six days in the Texas countryside. “[After Angel], as far as the world was concerned, we were broken up. That was a great place to be because I can live my fucking life and write my songs as I go and let them marinate. That's why we chose to have it be self-titled, because this is the most natural record we've ever made,” guitarist/vocalist Nate Grace told Fader. Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

27 Aug 20202min

HÆLOS - "Unknown Melody," a 2020 single on Æ Recordings. London electronic quartet HÆLOS return with a new single, released via their own Æ imprint. “We found ourselves reminiscing about some mid-’00s electro releases and feeling a nostalgia for those early trips,” says band member Dom Goldsmith, who also produced the track. “Writing ‘Unknown Melody’ back in January, it just felt cathartic for us to remember some of the good times when everything felt so unstable. How little we knew. We’re listening and learning.” Since then, in reaction to the way the world seems to be continuously turning itself upside down, the band decided to do "upside down" versions of each new track. You’ll find the one for Unknown Melody on their Bandcamp here. Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

26 Aug 20204min