Out This Week 8/30

Live at KEXP Volume Seven, the latest in our annual series collecting live performances recorded exclusively for KEXP, hits stores today. On this disc, you will find one-of-a-kind, exclusive live tracks from some of this year’s greatest artists, some well known, others just discovered. All the bands on this compilation have donated their performances to support KEXP.

On Live at KEXP Volume Seven, you’ll hear popular artists like Grammy nominee Florence + The Machine, local favorites like Mad Rad, and up and coming artists like Sharon Van Etten.

You can pick up Live at KEXP Volume Seven online today at Amazon and directly from KEXP or from these Seattle area retailers:

Check out a sample from Live at KEXP Volume Seven right now!

Plus, there’s a lot more in record stores today...

We’ve long been fans of Beirut -- in fact, they were included on Volume Three of our Live at KEXP CD series -- and they’ve returned after four years to follow up 2007′s The Flying Club Cup with The Rip Tide, which our Music Director, Don Yates, calls “the warmest, most inviting Beirut recording to date,” featuring “relatively straightforward orchestral-pop arrangements with piano, accordion, ukulele, stately horns and sweeping strings that place the emphasis on the album’s brighter, more upfront melodies along with Condon’s velvety croon and increasingly introspective lyrics.” Other new albums getting lots of airplay on KEXP come from Sub Pop band Male Bonding, whose second album Don Yates calls “a consistently strong set of punchy power pop with reckless tempos, fuzzy ‘90s-indie guitars, hazy vocals and strong pop melodies;” Northern Mali’s Tinariwen with another stellar album of Saharan desert blues; and X frontman John Doe with whose latest is full of “roots-tinged indie-rock ranging from punkish rockers to some poignant ballads.”

Other albums out this week worth putting in your shopping basket right beside Live at KEXP Volume Seven come from Blood Orange, who is really Devonte Hynes (a.k.a. Lightspeed Champion), roots recording artist and producer Ry Cooder, Miami garage-pop trio Jacuzzi Boys, NYC’s Cymbals Eat Guitars, 70′s inspired roots-reggae group 10 Ft. Ganja Plant, and two songwriting veterans, Robert Earl Keen and country legend Glen Campbell, who is recently announced that this would be his final album after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.