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Live on KEXP with Arlo Parks Dec 10, 2021

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Today, we bring you an episode of KEXP's Live on KEXP podcast featuring an exclusive session with Arlo Parks.

With two EPs and a seemingly endless number of accolades from nearly every tastemaker in the music industry under her belt, it’s an understatement to say that Arlo Parks’ debut album was highly anticipated. Released in January, ‘Collapsed in Sunbeams’ lives up to the hype and reflects the artist born Anais Oluwatoyin Estelle Marinho’s compassionate, friendly, and poetic spirit.

For Live on KEXP, Troy Nelson traces Marinho’s journey from recording songs in her bedroom to sharing stages with heavyweights like Paramore before Marinho plays a mellow, vibey set of songs.

Songs performed:

Cola
Green Eyes
Eugene
Black Dog
Caroline
Hurt

Watch the full Live on KEXP session on YouTube

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Sea Lemon - Sunday Dec 10, 2021

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Sea Lemon - "Sunday," a 2021 self-released single.

Seattle artist Sea Lemon (aka 26-year-old singer/songwriter Natalie Lew) shares a shimmery slice of dreampop on her debut single "Sunday," a first listen at her forthcoming EP, out next year. Producer Stefan Mac (Wallows, No Vacation) gives the song a bright ebullience, even while the lyrics confront negative emotions.

“My first release, ‘Sunday,’ is a song that’s all about the anxiety and stress that comes with navigating relationships of all kind,” Lew told Atwood Magazine. “During the pandemic, when I wasn’t actively interacting with my loved ones, I constantly wondered and overthought about those relationships — would they survive? Was I doing enough? ‘Sunday’ is a reflection of those feelings I had, and represents how every passing day can feel like a worsening situation.”

She continues: “The song, along with the rest of my upcoming EP, sonically was heavily inspired by Beach House and The Cure, artists that I constantly turn to for inspiration as they portray a bittersweet and nostalgic feeling in their music. Toeing the line between sorrow and happiness, into a grey area of somewhere in the middle, is the kind of sentiment I love to feel and write about when it comes to my music.”

Read the full post on KEXP.org

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Nilüfer Yanya - Stabilise Dec 09, 2021

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Nilüfer Yanya - "Stabilise" from the 2022 album Painless on ATO.

British singer-songwriter Nilüfer Yanya will release her highly-anticipated sophomore full-length Painless on March 4th, 2022 via ATO Records. Today's Song of the Day is a sneak peek at the upcoming release, a meditation on the monotony of daily life.

“I was really thinking about your surroundings and how much they influence or change your perception of things," Yanya stated in a press release. The accompanying video, directed by her sister Molly Daniel, explores this idea. “A lot of the city is just grey and concrete, there’s no escape,” she continues. “The video plays on the central theme in the song of no one coming to save you ever. It’s set in depths of reality in every day life where we are the only one’s truly capable of salvaging or losing ourselves. Nothing is out there — both a depressing and reassuring statement (depending on how you look at it). Sometimes you have to dress up as a spy or a rock star and just hope for the best.”

Read the full post on KEXP.org

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Hatchie - This Enchanted Dec 08, 2021

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Hatchie - "This Enchanted," a 2021 single on Secretly Canadian.

Brisbane, Australia-based artist Hatchie (real name: Harriette Pilbeam) has signed to the label Secretly Canadian, sharing her first new single since her 2019 dream-pop debut LP Keepsake. In a press release, she states today's KEXP Song of the Day "encapsulates everything I wanted to do moving forward from my first album."

She continues: "I started writing it with [producer] Jorge [Elbrecht] and [Hatchie guitarist] Joe [Agius] in February 2020 and completed it from afar in lockdown later in the year. We had been talking about making something dancey but shoegaze.”

“It’s one of the more lighthearted, lyrically vague songs of my new recordings about falling in love; it’s not a perfect relationship, but you’re enthralled by one another and it’s an easy love. It’s one of the most fun songs I’ve written, so it was a no-brainer to pick it as my first solo release in almost two years. It feels so right to be working with a label as exciting as Secretly as I step into new territory with Hatchie. I’ve been counting down the days until its release for a long time.“

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Hand Habits - More Than Love Dec 07, 2021

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Hand Habits - "More Than Love" from the 2021 album Fun House on Saddle Creek.

It was a "fun house" indeed: during the pandemic, singer/songwriter Meg Duffy (who records as Hand Habits) shared a home with fellow recording artist Sasami and engineer Kyle Thomas. The quarantine bubble provided Duffy with the creative environment and support they needed to craft their most adventurous album yet, Fun House.

“Sasami really challenged me to just trust and explore these different parts of my identity that are definitely in me — these different kinds of music that I'm really influenced by and inspired by,” Duffy told The Fader. “I wasn't ready to put out a record that was like all kind of like very slow sad ballads about my trauma and how I'm navigating that — I wanted to make the record feel at least a little energetically uplifting and contrasting between these production elements and this [intense] lyrical content. Sasami really, really helped me go there.”

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BLK ODYSSY - MURDA Dec 06, 2021

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BLK ODYSSY - "MURDA" from the 2021 album BLK VINTAGE on After School.

“I want to create something that will be culturally impactful for my people. I want to do something that is impactful on a larger scale, something that is for groups of Black people across the country,” says soulful songwriter Sam Houston, who records under the name BLK ODYSSY.

His debut album, BLK VINTAGE, finds inspiration in both the world around him and his own personal experiences, like the tragic 2010 murder of his older brother, David, at the hands of the New Jersey police. “The Black youth has been poisoned numb because of the shit we have to deal with," he continues via a press release. "I want to speak to our experiences and let people know it’s okay to shed that layer and really, truly feel. My goal is to connect with the Black youth, and my goal is to connect with my people and speak to them on a level where we can stop suffering from happening. There’s only so much we can do for the dead. This record asks: ‘How can we stop this from happening again?’”

Read the full post on KEXP.org

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Smokey Brights - Honey Eye Dec 03, 2021

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Smokey Brights - "Honey Eye," a 2021 single on Freakout.

Today's Song of the Day— from Seattle's own Smokey Brights — is a love song for uncertain times, with frontman Ryan Devlin declaring "Honey I want to rock the world with you, before it splits in two / Don’t know what else to do."

It's a fitting statement from a band led by married couple Devlin and Kim West, who've, indeed, rocked the world, most recently with their 2020 full-length I Love You But Damn. Today's featured track is an out-take from that album, along with another new single "Unity."

"They were just two songs that didn’t quite fit on that record but live together really nicely," West told Atwood Magazine recently. "They’re both about unity and taking care of each other and the importance of living right now. They feel really appropriate to release right now."

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Just Mustard - I Am You Dec 02, 2021

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Just Mustard - "I Am You," a 2021 single on Partisan.

Irish quintet Just Mustard caught our ears with their powerful noise rock debut Wednesday, an album that earned them a Choice Music Prize nomination for Album of the Year in 2018. Since then, they've signed to Partisan Records and have shared a first look at a sophomore release (projected released: 2022) with today's Song of the Day. The moody, shoegaze-tinged track was produced by the band and mixed by David Wrench (FKA twigs, The xx, Caribou). The accompanying video, directed by Dylan Friese-Greene, captures the song's eerie vibe, with vocals from Katie Ball reminiscent of Alison Shaw of Cranes.

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Spiritualized - Always Together With You Dec 01, 2021

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Spiritualized - "Always Together With You" from the 2022 album Everything Was Beautiful on Fat Possum.

If today's Song of the Day sounds a little familiar, you're not just tripping on Spiritualized's otherworldly psych-sound. “Always Together With You” was originally released in demo form in 2014 as “Always Forgetting With You (The Bridge Song)”, but it's since been reworked for the long-running space-rock band's ninth album, Everything Was Beautiful, out February 25th via Fat Possum. The title — along with the title of his 2018 album And Nothing Hurt — completes a beloved quote from Kurt Vonnegut’s classic 1969 novel Slaughterhouse Five.

“There was so much information on it that the slightest move would unbalance it, but going around in circles is important to me,” said frontman J Spaceman (real name: Jason Pierce) in a press release about the upcoming release. “Not like you’re spiraling out of control but you’re going around and around and on each revolution you hold onto the good each time. Sure, you get mistakes as well, but you hold on to some of those too and that’s how you kind of… achieve. Well, you get there.”

Read the full post on KEXP.org

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Mandy, Indiana - Bottle Episode Nov 30, 2021

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Mandy, Indiana - "Bottle Episode" from the … EP on Fire Talk.

Mandy, Indiana aren't from Indiana at all — the post-rock quartet actually hail from Manchester, England, where founding members Scott Fair (guitar/production) and Valentine Caulfield (vocals/lyrics) met at a show their respective separate bands were playing. After deciding to team up, the new group began working on their debut EP '...', out physically on December 10th via Fire Talk Records.

On today's Song of the Day, Caulfield sought to capture a somber, armed forces inspiration. “I wanted to build up on the military style of the track, but in a very slow crescendo, and not in a very obvious way," she explained in a press release. "The lyrics talk of men waiting, moving forward; war is never mentioned, yet it is obvious that the men are waiting for death. The song ends with the men almost dancing as the bullets hit them.”

Fair added, “The inspiration for the guitar line was based upon a recording of a flood siren in Todmorden. I was going to use the recording as a sample but then I decided to try and recreate it with the guitar.”

Read the full post on KEXP.org

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