Holiday cheer and goodwill is in the air, and along with it comes the overwhelming influx of holiday music retailers are using to manipulate you to spend, spend, spend. In spite of their efforts, it’s a great time to give, give, give, and get a dose of sonic relief from the holiday scramble and do...

Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Each and every Friday we offer...

Taipei Fine Arts Museum Taiwan’s contemporary art scene has been tied up in knots trying to reorient exhibition-goers out of passivity and into active engagement. It has proven a complicated transition, but 12 artist groups have come together to work their way back to the start of the puzzle, posing the fundamental question that lies behind any show: ‘Whose Exhibition is This?’ In fact, ‘Whose Exhibition...’ tries its hardest not to be an exhibition, but a form of institutional critique. As an established form of artistic inquiry into the nature and limitations of art institutions, the institiutional critique posited here tests the neutrality of art by calling into question the limitations...

Some time in either the late '90s or early '00s, I was at a De La Soul show in the Bay Area. To be honest, for whatever reason, the energy was kind of flagging throughout the whole thing (I had seen some great De La shows in the past, this just didn't happen to be among the more stellar ones). Biz had been one of the opening DJs and during the De La's set, they brought him out and he sang the chorus to "Just a Friend." Brought the house down. It was the most energized the crowd had been the entire night. And the thing is - I don't remotely consider Biz to be a one-hit wonder but it is frickin' amazing how powerfully that song has remained in popular culture. I've always been...

In case you're wondering which of the Democrats sent equal marriage to defeat today in New York state, here's the list. You might think, as I did, that it was senators from the more conservative upstate districts who voted "no", but you'd be wrong...equality died today thanks to representatives from Queens and Brooklyn, including districts with especially large gay populations.I've linked to the

Two weeks ago, old time blues musician Frank Fairfield stopped by The Roadhouse with Greg Vandy to play songs from his new album and some traditional favorites. While just in his mid-twenties, Fairfield is a man out of time, looking and playing the part of a 20’s Dust Bowl rambler, with ankle-high...

Our current series for KEXP Documentaries is Civil Rights Songs. Pete Seeger was a leading activist in the fight for unions in the 1940’s. In the 50’s his folk band The Weavers were blacklisted — forbidden to play any commercial gigs — for being part of the communist party. The Weavers broke up in...

The Dodo Fightback Genre: Indie / Post Punk / Progressive From: London, United Kingdom The Dodo Fightback, a four-piece based in London, are giving their debut album 'Into The Wilderness' away free and it's better than most of the albums that you'd have...

Del-Fi label founder, record producer and “the world’s youngest bandleader” Bob Keane passed away on Saturday at age 87. By age 17, Keane was fronting his own big band and played with different bands, including Artie Shaw’s, throughout the ’40s. He started Del-Fi after co-founding and working as an...