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David King Jones - The Covid 19 Christmas Song Dec 23, 2020

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David King Jones - "The Covid19 Christmas Song," a 2020 self-released single.

This week, we are featuring Christmas-themed songs selected by Brian Foss, one of the hosts of KEXPs punk show Sonic Reducer, lover of off-brand holiday tunes, and owner of pants. Brian has been doing a punk rock Christmas special every year since 2004 and has been a Christmas Day on-air DJ since 2012. No standards are played, only original X-Mess songs, most with a humorous bent. Hear him this holiday season from 12-7 PM PT on Friday, December 25th, and get even more seasonal songs on his 17th annual Punk Rock Christmas show on Sonic Reducer, available in KEXP's two-week Streaming Archive (scroll down to the December 20th show).

Brian says:

This year there's an uncounted amount of holiday themed songs dealing with the pandemic, but this one is a stand out favorite. Written, performed & produced by himself, David King Jones mix of humor, sincerity and hook writing make for an undeniably enjoyable song.

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Kelly Finnigan - Santa's Watching You Dec 22, 2020

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Kelly Finnigan - "Santa's Watching You" from the 2020 album A Joyful Sound on Colemine Records.

Brian says:

Formally from the bay area band Monophonics, Kelly Finnigan's new holiday album is a solid soulful release. His reworking of the The Sacred Four track is a keeper.

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Michael M - Humans Are Not Worth Saving (Merry Christmas) Dec 21, 2020

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Michael M - "Humans Are Not Worth Saving (Merry Christmas)" from the 2020 self-released album A Digital Christmas Gift For You.

Brian says:

I don't know much about Michael M (except he's from Glasgow) but I find his humor dark and endearing. The song we are sharing today is super catchy and I find myself singing it way too much. If the world is going to burn will you laugh with me at least? He has a whole youtube channel committed to making snarky Christmas videos.

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Draze - The Main Thing Dec 18, 2020

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Draze - "The Main Thing," a 2020 self-released single.

Earlier this year, attorney, CNN political commentator, and activist Angela Rye launched a new series for TIDAL titled The Main Thing, where Rye sits down with "high-profile celebrities, entertainers, history makers, athletes, organizers, and more" for candid, intimate conversations. And noneother than Seattle's own Draze has composed the show's opening theme song.

Draze was just nominated for "Best Hip-Hop Artist" by the African Achievement Awards; winners will be announced this Saturday, December 19th at 6 PM PST.

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Mystic - We Are the People (All Around the World) Dec 17, 2020

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Mystic - "We Are The People (All Around The World)," a 2020 single on Beautifull Soundworks.

Bay Area-based hip-hop artist Mystic (real name: Mandolyn Wind Ludlum) is a veteran of the scene, from participating in rap battles in the early '90s to touring with Digital Underground in the late '90s. She was nominated for a Grammy and a BET Award for "Best Female Hip-Hop Artist" in the early 2000s, and her work has appeared on TV soundtracks and commercials.

She's also an activist, serving as the Bay Area Coordinator for the Hip Hop Caucus, a non-profit organization that aims to promote political activism for young U.S. voters using hip-hop music and culture. Her latest single, and today's Song of the Day, she continues to use her music to speak out against injustice. As she said on her Facebook page, "I really made this song for all of us around the world fighting for justice and reimagining new futures — those of us who believe shifting paradigms is possible."

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Astu - Source of Her (feat. Salami Rose Joe Louis) Dec 16, 2020

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Astu - "Source of Her (feat. Salami Rose Joe Louis)" from the 2020 album ALTARS on Boyish Records.

On her debut full-length ALTARS, Eritrean-American artist ASTU combines soul and synth-pop to craft her confident and thought-provoking grooves.

Astu now resides in Oakland, but arrived there from Oklahoma where she attended seminary college, married a minister, and then became a minister herself. She had been singing gospel music since she was a pre-schooler, but hadn't pursued non-secular music until her 2017 debut EP Patterns. With ALTARS, she opens up even more, writing on Facebook: "this album is filled with me..every part of me..the parts i’ve been too afraid to see most of my life. and i want to give it to you."

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Ivy Sole - BITTERSWEET Dec 15, 2020

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Ivy Sole - "BITTERSWEET" from the 2020 album SOUTHPAW on Les Fleurs Records.

Ivy Sole wasn't even sure she wanted to release a new album this year, but thankfully, she did, with her brand new release SOUTHPAW.

"Me and my manager have been hesitant to release any music to distract or make light of what is happening, and this is prior to George Floyd and how that has changed the COVID era," she admitted to DJBooth.net. "To be honest, I was gonna drop an album this year and decided to hold off on that to sit with what is happening right now. I don’t want to 'lend' my voice to the movement. By virtue of being an abolitionist and endeavoring to be a radical thinker, anything that I would release was going to add to that conversation. With 'Bittersweet,' I wanted to release something that spoke directly to it rather than shying away from it."

She adds, "I started writing it just on some, 'Damn, I miss the feeling of summer.' This summer feels bittersweet to me. I can’t touch and be touched the way I’m usually experiencing summer. Summer is such a sensory period — it’s hot, you sweat, you’re in the park, on rooftops. I was on some nostalgic shit with the first verse, and then the George Floyd uprising happened, and I was like… At this point, everything is changing, so I don’t want the change to be piecemeal at all. I don’t want the minimum. That’s what the powers that be tend to expect us to accept. I’m in a headspace where I finally have a taste of what it could be like to be free, so I just refuse to settle in any way, shape, or form. All of us deserve that. More and more people are starting to realize they don’t have to accept what they’ve been given."

Proceeds from the track are being donated to Black womxn experiencing housing instability or facing eviction in the NY/NJ/PA area.

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Ego Ella May - Girls Don't Always Sing About Boys Dec 14, 2020

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Ego Ella May - "Girls Don't Always Sing About Boys" from the 2020 album Honey For Wounds on UpperRoom Records.

On her debut album Honey For Wounds, South London-based artist Ego Ella May provides sweet relief from troubling times with her jazzy neo-soul sound. On today's Song of the Day, she asks listeners, "What if I wanna talk about suffering?"

“I will, of course, continue to write about love,” May said in an interview with Bandcamp. “But I’m also conscious of other things that happen in life, and I like to address them in song form. There are so many different themes on the album that it felt like a diary, even. ‘Girls Don’t Always Sing About Boys’ came about because I was sick of hearing songs about relationships on the radio. I wanted to talk about other things, and at the time I wasn’t thinking about love. Grenfell [the 2017 West London Tower fire that killed 72 people and injured just as many] had just happened, and my mind was awake. I was reading about sustainability and pollution, and training to be a counsellor — I just had lots to think about. I wanted to challenge myself to put it all into song form.”

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Byland - Mine Dec 11, 2020

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Byland - "Mine" from the 2020 self-released album Gray.

For her latest LP Gray, Albuquerque-based artist Alie Renee Byland (who records under the name Byland) immersed herself in the Seattle music scene, collaborating with producer and multi-instrumentalist Nathan Yaccino (known for his work with Soundgarden, Noah Gundersen, Brandi Carlile). For today's featured track, she invited local musicians Abby Gundersen and Meagan Grandall (aka Lemolo) into the Ballard recording studio.

In a press release, she tells us:

“Mine” is about realizing that my energy is finite and that I have permission to say “no”. I grew up idealizing the notion of giving without limit. When I felt drained, I thought there was something wrong with me. Last Summer, I was feeling especially emotionally and relationally exhausted. I wrote this song while I had an overwhelming amount of calls, emails and texts to respond to. I intentionally wanted “Mine”’s rhythm and offset melody to feel abrupt at times, to express the sense of being pulled in polarizing directions.

I was nervous to bring another track to my producer, Nathan Yaccino, given that we were well into the recording process already. But after sharing a simple phone demo, we promptly sat down together and fleshed out the piano tracks, vocals and overall vision for this song. Abby Gunderson’s cinematic strings and the haunting harmonies of Meagan Grandall helped fortify and exemplify the internal expanse this song symbolizes. A liberating anthem, “Mine” is perhaps the most emblematic of the record’s ode to prioritizing mental health, by giving a voice to subconscious thoughts, and creating space within, a space that’s mine.”

Read the full post on KEXP.org

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The Weather Station - Tried To Tell You Dec 10, 2020

Show notes

The Weather Station - "Tried To Tell You" from the 2020 album Ignorance on Fat Possum.

The Weather Station (a project of Toronto-based artist Tamara Linderman) returns early next year with her fifth full-length, titled Ignorance, out February 5, 2021 via Fat Possum; today, we get a sneak peek at the new release with today's Song of the Day, "Tried To Tell You."

In a press release, Linderman tells us the track is about “reaching out to someone; a specific person, or maybe every person, who is tamping down their wildest and most passionate self in service of some self (and world?) destructive order.” The accompanying video was directed by Lindeman herself, and was set near the house where she grew up. She adds:

The video portrays a person who is beset by miracles and visions of beauty, which emanate from inside of and all around him, but rather than reacting with awe or joy, he reacts with annoyance, indifference, and mistrust. We are taught not to see the natural world that we still live in, preferring instead to dwell on the artificial, which is so often a poor substitute for the vibrant real. Flowers really do rise up from mud, and many of us are full of treasures and beauty, but we often discount these things or throw them away.

Read the full post on KEXP.org

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