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Crack Cloud - Tunnel Vision Aug 04, 2020

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Crack Cloud - "Tunnel Vision" from the 2020 album Pain Olympics on Meat Machine Records.

Through the fog of Vancovuer's opioid crisis, Crack Cloud emerged. “Crack Cloud was an outlet for me during the early days of my rehab,” vocalist and drummer Zach Choy explained to NME. “A way of addressing things I’d internalised over the years, the anxiety and turmoil I used to deal with in more destructive ways.”

Since then, the band has evolved into a full-on arts collective of musicians, film-makers, artists, and designers, many of whom are recovering addicts themselves or people who work with addicts. Their debut album, Pain Olympics, lists almost 30 contributors in both musicianship and artistry. Many of the members of Crack Cloud live and work together in harm reduction units located in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

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Maajo - Esukey (feat. Ismaila Sané) Aug 03, 2020

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Maajo - "Esukey (feat. Ismaila Sané)" from the 2020 album Kuru Kuru on Queen Nanny.

Though hailing from Tampere, Finland, Maajo find influence in traditional African music, combining it with modern electronic sounds. They continue to explore this fusion on their second LP Kuru Kuru, released earlier this year on Queen Nanny Records, and on today's Song of the Day, they team up with Senegalese vocalist Ismaila Sané for this infectious groove. Sané began his career in the '70s as a percussionist and also as a solo dancer/choreographer of African ballet. He relocated to Finland in 1999, winning the "citizen of the year" prize in 2003, marking the first time an emigrant knowingly received the award.

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Black Ends - Monday Mourning Jul 31, 2020

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Black Ends - "Monday Mourning" from the 2020 self-released Stay Evil EP.

With today's Song of the Day, Seattle's Black Ends contend with acceptance against a grunge-y backdrop. Frontperson Nicolle Swims told KEXP when we premiered the track:

“‘Monday Mourning’ is a pretty bleak song although it may not sound that way at first listen. it’s basically about the impending demise we all face and the getting ready for death. The character in the song goes through their week suffering and mourning their own death in different ways until they finally end up dying on a Sunday (which is why that day doesn’t come up in the song at all). As ‘scary’ as that sounds, it’s supposed to be about finally accepting that fate- to release the thanatophobia we all feel at some point and just accepting that life ends and it’s okay. That’s ‘Monday Mourning!’”

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Braids - Snow Angel Jul 30, 2020

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Braids - "Snow Angel" from the 2020 album Shadow Offering on Secret City Records.

Today's Song of the Day was written by Montreal-based band Braids in the wake of the 2016 election, "as our collective conscience took a sharp inhale,” as vocalist Raphaelle Standell-Preston put it in a press release. She elaborates:

“It’s a diary entry of sorts – a snapshot of the mind grappling with our era’s endless barrage of content and destruction, continents away and close to home. *This* moment, with our world in the midst of a pandemic, is admittedly a new context. But I can’t help but sense the song speaks to feelings many of us are experiencing – uncertainty, angst and a desperate desire to make sense of it all. For me, it was deeply therapeutic to write and sing this song; saying things out loud can help us to not feel so alone, can help validate our natural fears about the future of our world, and can bring to light some of the hard questions that many of us are asking ourselves. I believe that art can change our relationship to fear. We hope this song can offer you a moment of catharsis and relief, in the same way writing and performing it has for us.”

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Chong the Nomad - Take Two (feat. Hollis) Jul 29, 2020

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Chong the Nomad - "Take Two" (feat. Hollis), a 2020 self-released single.

Seattle-based artist Chong the Nomad (real name: Alda Agustiano) returns this summer with the soulful jam "Take Two," a collaboration with Grammy-nominated local artist Hollis Wong-Wear (more on her here). On a trip to Los Angeles, Agustiano connected with Hollis and Grammy-nominated producer Rogét Chahayed for an inspiring session. "Wrote it during my first big writing trip in LA and I was super sick," she confessed on Facebook. "Still managed to create something I’m proud of."

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Nick Hakim - QADIR Jul 28, 2020

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Nick Hakim - "QADIR" from the 2020 album WILL THIS MAKE ME GOOD on ATO Records.

On today's KEXP Song of the Day, New York-based artist Nick Hakim shares a deeply personal tribute to his childhood friend Qadir Imhotep West, who passed away in 2018 at the age of 25. (That's a photo of West that adorns the cover of Hakim's latest album, WILL THIS MAKE ME GOOD.)

“He was a little younger than me, but we had a similar path,” Hakim says in a press release. “We both had trouble in school and switched schools a lot. He was the youngest in his family and his older sisters asked me to watch out for him. The song is my ode to him. It’s my attempt to relate to how he must have been feeling.”

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King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Honey Jul 27, 2020

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King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - "Honey," a 2020 single on Flightless Records.

Earlier this month, Australian psych-rock royalty King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard shared their first new material of 2020 with the single "Honey."

“I wrote this song a couple of years ago,” frontman Stu Mackenzie revealed on Twitter. “It’s nice to have it out in the world.”

The track premiered alongside a video directed, edited, and photographed by John Angus Stewart, in a socially-distanced manner. "Shot at sunset during the apocalypse with a reeeeeeal long lens," Mackenzie confirmed on Twitter.

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Eggshells - Unknown Jul 24, 2020

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Eggshells - "Unknown," a 2020 self-released single.

Seattle trio Eggshells brings together the talents of the Verdoes siblings (Peter of In Praise of Folly, Can the Boy Tell Time, and Benjamin of Iska Dhaaf, Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band, In Praise of Folly) and songwriter Sera Han, who brings the perspective of a first-generation immigrant queer woman to their moody trip-hop sound. Today’s Song of the Day is an early look at their third and forthcoming full-length album, Hopeless Romancers, out later this year.

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The Jayhawks - This Forgotten Town Jul 23, 2020

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The Jayhawks - “This Forgotten Town” from the 2020 album XOXO on Sham/Thirty Tigers.

On their 11th LP, the members of long-running Americana band The Jayhawks all share songwriting duties for the first time ever. On today's Song of the Day, in particular, lead singer Gary Louris and drummer Tim O’Reagan share vocals on a track co-written by Louris and bassist Marc Perlman.

“Introducing different voices throughout the song added a new dimension to telling the story,” Perlman told Rolling Stone Magazine. “We approached it much like we did the whole record — more collaboration in the writing and more sharing of lead vocals than in the past.”

“Marc brought the chord progression for this song, and then I started singing a melody on top of it,” Louris added. “We wrote the lyrics together.”

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Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio - Inner City Blues Jul 22, 2020

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Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio - “Inner City Blues,” a 2020 single on Colemine Records.

Back in June, Colemine Records launched the Brighter Days Ahead singles series, a response to the stay-at-home orders and the subsequent loss of income from canceling tours, postponing release dates, and ceasing the manufacturing for LPs and 45s. "We wanted to come up with some way to give our fans and our artist's fans something to look forward to," explained label owner Terry Cole. Starting on May 22nd and running through the summer, Colemine will release a new track every Friday on their Bandcamp page with 100% of any revenues generated going directly to the artist. "Our goals are simple: put a little bit of money in our artist's pockets and get our fans some new tunes," Cole summarized.

The series kicked off with Seattle's own Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio covering Marvin Gaye's 1971 track "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)" off his landmark album What's Going On. The lyrics convey the despair of the bleak economic situation of the times, the lack of support from the government, and police brutality. (That sounds depressingly familiar.) But, in the hands of maestro Delvon Lamarr, the song sounds almost joyous as an instrumental. Guitarist Jimmy James adds a funky groove to the track, and drummer Dan Weiss picks up the pace from Gaye's original composition. Listening to it makes you believe, there might really be brighter days ahead.

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