Jason McCue - When He Drinks

Constant Smiles - "Run to Stay" from the 2021 album Paragons on Sacred Bones. Since 2009, Constant Smiles have been churning out roughly an album a year, amassing a pretty enormous discography that’s now 15 records deep. Led by Ben Jones, the band is more of a collective, with more than 50 members providing contributions over the past 13 years. While Constant Smiles have tried out a number of varying sounds over the years, their latest release sees the collective join the Sacred Bones family for a 13-track record of dynamic indie rock titled Paragons. Our Song of the Day is the album’s lead single “Run to Stay,” a mid-tempo strummer with a shimmering, wistful tone. “‘Run To Stay’ is about not being present in the moment, and struggling with antisocial tendencies,” explains Jones. “Like when you’re at a party or talking to someone but you’re only half paying attention to what they’re saying because you can’t stop thinking about other things you need to do. Or when you avoid hanging out with friends because you want to work on music or something, but nothing comes to you so you just end up sitting around all day.” The song comes with a video self-directed by the band that sees its members traveling separately, in various modes of transportation. Says Jones of the video, “We were trying to capture that anxious feeling of always needing to be somewhere or be doing something else but realizing that it isn’t ever that important.” Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

13 Jan 20222min

Lætitia Sadier - "New Moon," a 2021 single on Drag City. Laetitia Sadier’s heavenly croons became familiar to us via Stereolab back when they appeared on the scene in the early ‘90s. On our Song of the Day, “New Moon,” Sadier proves her vocals have not only remained intact but, like a fine wine, have grown with age. The lead single off her forthcoming, as yet untitled, solo record is founded by a sultry bossa nova beat with dreamy guitar strums and poetic, somewhat esoteric, lyricism. “Dreaming you fall /Into being /Turbulent transition /Evade /Overriding /The feelings,” Sadier calls out. Recorded in London by Sadier and Hannes Plattmeier, she had this to say about "New Moon": "The nature of trauma - by going through a process of feeling the emotions of all of that has stricken or afflicted us, individually. By not avoiding these feelings, it's a way to evolve and cut the ties of the past, that are keeping us down and into the turmoil we are currently experiencing.” The new record follows 2017’s Find Me Finding You, which was released under the name Laetitia Sadier Source Ensemble. Stereolab released the compilation album Electrically Possessed, which collected the band's rarities spanning from 1999 to 2008, in early 2021. Watch the video for “New Moon,” directed by Sadier and Tanya Small, at the link below. Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

12 Jan 20224min

Bonobo - "Rosewood" from the 2022 album Fragments on Ninja Tune. Since the late ‘90s, Simon Green has been sharing his sweeping electronic grooves as Bonobo to much acclaim. 2022 will see him unveil his hotly anticipated seventh full-length Fragments. Created during the pandemic, the songs were made out of fragmented pieces of ideas the British-born, LA-based producer put together while on lockdown with the help of some notable names like Jamila Woods, Joji, Kadhja Bonet, and Jordan Rakei. Our Song of the Day is the record’s lead single, “Rosewood.” Customarily warm and woozy, the song has a locked groove with the repeating phrase, “I won’t leave you,” providing emotional resonance until the song’s cathartic dance floor build-up. It’s a lesson in restraint, letting the subtle flourishes of the song shine while never fully releasing or doing too much. Fragments is out this Friday, January 14 via Ninja Tune. It follows up Bonobo’s 2020 collaborative EP with Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Heartbreak / 6000 Ft. and his Grammy-nominated 2017 full-length Migration. Watch Bonobo’s KEXP in-studio session from 2017 at the link below. Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

11 Jan 20224min

Carrie Biell - "Come By" from the 2022 self-released album We Get Along. As one-quarter of Moon Palace, which she founded with her twin sister Cat Biell, Carrie Biell makes warm and rambling indie rock with a hint of desert psychedelia. For her solo work, which she’s been releasing since 2001’s treasured and difficult to find Symphony of Sirens, her music is much more intimate, stripped-down, and nearly always downtempo. Our Song of the Day, “Come By,” sounds like it could easily be a Sharon Van Etten track, with Biell’s gravelly voice leading slow-chugging guitar strums with just the faintest twang. The song comes from Beill’s forthcoming pandemic-made record We Get Along, out in February 2022. The record will be her first solo full-length in 14 years, following 2008’s When Your Feet Hit the Stars. Biell had this to say about “Come By”: “This song means the world to me because it is the first song I wrote in the whole collection for the record. It was after playing a show with my friend, Sera Cahoone. She suggested that we should collaborate on a song and then I ran with it. Sera added harmonies, and also came up with ideas for some of the song’s instrumentation. “‘Come By’ is about the moment a long flirtation crosses over into more between two people who are both healing from long partnerships that ended unexpectedly. It’s a new beginning, that none of them envisioned for themselves. It’s a much-needed leap forward, and although there may be a lot of past relationship baggage hanging over, or seem too soon after a breakup, there is an ask to set that all aside and go for it. To let yourself enjoy the moment and take a leap with a new person.” Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

10 Jan 20223min

Eternia & Rel McCoy - "Home (feat. Shad & SHEAL)" from the 2021 album FREE on Fat Beats. This past September saw two of Toronto’s hip hop stars team up for a collaborative album titled FREE. Juno-nominated rapper Eternia and Juno-winning producer Rel McCoy put together twelve tracks that flex their skills while shining a light on some of the criminally underrated talent that’s coming out of Canada. Our Song of the Day, “Home,” sees two of those underrated talents join them, Juno-winning rapper Shad and angelic vocalist SHEAL. Inspired by and built off of the latter artist’s 2016 track of the same name, the song samples SHEAL’s emotional hook and is led by Eternia’s opening bars exploring displacement, loneliness, and homelessness. Shad then joins in for an incredible verse about his idea of home and the struggle to plant seeds while Rel’s downtempo instrumental guides them, well, home. The song comes with a video by Noisemaker Media’s Mark Carrenceja, who focuses squarely on the faces of the artists while journeying through two of Eternia’s homes - her former Queens and, now, Toronto. Watch the video at the link below. Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

7 Jan 20223min

NeONE the Wonderer - "Nose Dive" from the 2021 album Future Bubblers 5.0 on Brownswood Recordings. Nathan Lawrence might have a limited body of work at NeONE the Wonderer, just a smattering of singles going back to early Summer 2020, but what the UK-based artist has out showcases a fully-formed artist with a captivating point of view. Our Song of the Day, “Nose Dive,” displays his penchant for jazzy, grooves, intoxicating soulful croons, and effortless flows on topics both personal and metaphysical. The song comes from the 5th edition of the Future Bubblers compilation. An expansion of Gilles Peterson’s network supported by Arts Council England and the PRS Foundation, Future Bubblers is an ongoing talent discovery and artist development scheme focuses on developing unsigned talent and building audiences for new left-field music. The compilation acts as a springboard for the musician’s careers with the cooperative model providing direct revenue to the artists by a share of the profits resulting in a sustainable income to work from. Previous Future Bubblers include artists such as Yazmin Lacey, Skinny Pelembe, MC Snowy, Forest Law and Kayla Painter to name a few. Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

6 Jan 20224min

Earl Sweatshirt - "Tabula Rasa (feat. Armand Hammer)" from the 2022 album Sick on Tan Cressida, inc/Warner. Former Odd Future member Earl Sweatshirt is gearing up to release his latest album, Sick, this month and the anticipation couldn’t be higher. His first release since 2019’s introspective Feet of Clay, Sick is still mostly a mystery other than the two singles released ahead of its arrival, “2010” and “Tabula Rasa.” The latter track is our Song of the Day and for good reason. Featuring the duo that made one of the biggest marks on hip hop in 2021, Armand Hammer, the song is a woozy spectacle of talent. An unchanging repeating piano line and fractured sample make a perfect bed for Earl, Elucid, and billy woods to lay their lyrics on. Each politely taking his own turn, they lethargically spit their individual truths for a poetic manifesto. “Sick is my humble offering of 10 songs recorded in the wake of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic and its subsequent lockdowns,” Earl Sweatshirt said in a statement. “Before the virus, I had been working on an album I named after a book I used to read with my mother (The People Could Fly). Once the lockdowns hit, people couldn’t fly anymore. A wise man said art imitates life. People were sick. The People were angry and isolated and restless. I leaned into the chaos cause it was apparent that it wasn’t going anywhere. These songs are what happened when I would come up for air.” Sick is out January 14 via Tan Cressida/Warner Records. “Tabula Rasa” was released alongside a lo-fi video of the rappers in the studio, making magic happen (or, in the case of billy woods, grilling ribs). Watch it at the link below. Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

5 Jan 20224min

Waahli - "DERIVE (feat. Webz)," a 2021 single on Wyzah Musk Prod. Born and raised in Montreal to a Haitian family, Waahli is one of the leading members of Hip Hop supergroup Nomadic Massive. He is revered as a trilingual emcee (English, French, Creole), guitarist and beatmaker. In 2018, he broke out on his own to release the debut solo album Black Soap and has since followed that up with 2020’s Soap Opera EP (Waahli is also an organic soap maker, hence his thematic focus on the sudsy cleaning product) and a string of singles. One of his recent singles and today’s Song of the Day is a reimagining of the song "À la Derive,” originally written by Haitian songwriter Fabrice Rouzier and performed by his fellow countryman Eric Charles. Built on a series of guitar loops entitled “nights in the cave” that Waahli regularly posted on social media and featuring vocals from the Paris-based Franco-Haitian singer Webz, the song is a dreamier, jazzier, more melancholic take on the Haitian original. Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

4 Jan 20223min