Earlier this week, Fever Ray surprised fans with a new album, the first in eight years for this solo project from Karin Dreijer Andersson, frontwoman for the Swedish duo The Knife. KEXP Music Director Don Yates calls it "an excellent set of adventurous, noise-addled electro-pop combining buzzing synths and a variety of inventive beats with her eerie vocals and frank lyrics of love, sex, and desire." Minnesota artist John Maus also returns with his first new LP in six years, "an impressive experimental take on '80s-steeped synth-pop and post-punk, featuring a murky, reverbed sound with icy synths, atmospheric guitars, driving rhythms, echoing vocals and apocalyptic, doom-laden lyrics leavened with mordant humor."
"In 2011, Italian composer Daniele Luppi collaborated with Danger Mouse (along with Jack White and Norah Jones) for the album Rome. For this follow-up concept album about 1980s-era Milan, he teamed up with the Brooklyn-based band Parquet Courts for a radically different-sounding record, combining a playful, edgy post-punk sound with alternating lead vocals from Parquet Courts' Andrew Savage and Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O." Tennessee-based artist Julien Baker returns with her sophomore full-length, a "powerful set of dark, hymnal folk-pop with a haunting, minimalist sound featuring just spare guitar and piano along with occasional strings and woodwinds accompanying her aching, dynamic vocals and vulnerable, almost unbearably intimate lyrics dealing with depression, doubt, and faith."
On his second album, Curtis Harding brings "a strong set of '70s-influenced soul and funk. Produced by Danger Mouse and Sam Cohen, the album features a moody, psych-tinged sound with fuzzy guitars, keyboards, cinematic strings and occasional horns accompanying his soulful falsetto." And veteran LA-based artist Joe Henry shares his 14th studio album, "a beautifully crafted set of low-key folk-pop combining a warm, often acoustic-oriented sound with spiritually infused, often politically charged lyrics."
A long-awaited U-Men 2-CD set has hit the streets. KEXP Music Director Don Yates notes the compilation "collects the complete 1984-89 recordings of this legendary Seattle band, whose pre-grunge sound was a feral, adventurous blend of pounding post-punk, raucous Sonics garage-rock, psychobilly and m…
Vancouver, BC artist Dan Bejar -- better known as Destroyer -- returns with his 11th album, which KEXP Music Director Don Yates describes as "a powerful set of dark,'80s-steeped New Wave/post-punk with prominent percussive synths, gleaming guitars and occasional strings and horns accompanying his d…
