In Our Headphones

Kelly Lee Owens - "On" from the 2020 album Inner Song on Smalltown Supersound. On her sophomore album, Inner Song, Welsh artist Kelly Lee Owens explores what she calls “the hardest three years of my life,” allowing her grief and sadness to express itself through her lush production work and her thoughtful lyrics.  As reported in a recent episode of the Song Exploder podcast, today's Song of the Day was inspired by the loss of the Prodigy’s Keith Flint, who passed away last year at the age of 49. (The working title was “Spirit of Keith.”) Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Æ MAK - "i dance in the kitchen (feat. Seba Safe)," a 2020 self-released single. Irish artist Æ Mak (real name: Aoife McCann) has always brought an infectious energy to her work. (Who can forget her dynamic performance at KEXP's 2019 Iceland Airwaves broadcast?) And now she brings that vivacity to the culinary with her new single "i dance in the kitchen," a sneak peek at her forthcoming EP titled how to: make a kitsch pop song to show the world, which will be out September 18th.  Written, recorded and produced during the coronavirus lockdown, the new EP was inspired by HOW TO, a zine by McCann's friend Eleanor Jameson, who "reached out to various Irish artists from different backgrounds, asking them to create a tutorial on a topic of their choosing."   Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Loraine James - "Don't You See It (feat. Jonnine)" from the 2020 Nothing EP on Hyperdub. Throughout the pandemic, London-based producer Loraine James has exercised her creativity, sharing demos and songs that didn't make the cut for her acclaimed 2019 album For You & I, releasing the remix EP Bangers and Mash, and, in July, releasing the five-track EP Hmm, with songs titled "Ahh," "Erm," and "Umm." On her latest EP, titled Nothing, James reached out to a series of collaborators who she felt "empathetically extend the feeling in her instrumental music with their own unique energies." For today's featured track, she teams up with Jonnine Standish of Australian band HTRK for a moody track pairing skittish sampled percussion with Standish's haunting vocals.  Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rose City Band - "Only Lonely" from the 2020 album Summerlong on Thrill Jockey. Portland-based musician Ripley Johnson returns with his project, the appropriately-titled Rose City Band, the latest addition to his musical resume that also includes Moon Duo and Wooden Shjips. While the "band" name might allude to a larger outfit, the Rose City Band is more of a solo endeavor for Johnson, with just the addition of John Jeffrey on drums. While his Moon Duo partner Sanae Yamada was committed to a theatre project, Johnson took to his home studio to write and record this sophomore album, Summerlong. With today's Song of the Day, he taps into those feelings of isolation, revealing in a press release: “There are times when you’re feeling so down that you wish you were just plain lonely. I think there’s a sense of resilience in it, though, a determination to roll with the punches and push on through. I wrote the music a while back and figured it would be an upbeat kind of tune. I guess I was just pretty down when I got around to writing the lyrics.” Read the full post KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jupiter & Okwess - "Na Kozonga," a 2020 single on Everloving Records. The phrase "Na Kozonga" translates to "the return" in the Congolese language of Lingala, and that's what Jupiter & Okwess was looking forward to after the 180-date worldwide tour promoting their 2017 album Kin Sonic: returning home. The song is dedicated to bandleader Jupiter Bokondji's father, who passed away recently, and the accompanying music video, filmed in his hometown of Kinshasa, shows the musician boarding a plane to return to his family in Africa, with a "metaphysical" detour. Afropop.org reports the song is about “a mystical universe strewn with spirits and African allegorical incarnations, from Mami Wata (Mummy water) to Aniotas.” The song is a cover of "Gotta Go Home," a 1979 single by German disco-funk group Boney M, which was a re-written take on the 1973 track "Hallo Bimmelbahn" by brothers Heinz and Jürgen Huth. "Na Kozonga" is the title track from Jupiter & Okwess' forthcoming full-length, which is scheduled for release in 2021. Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Noga Erez - "NO News on TV," a 2020 single on City Slang. With today's Song of the Day, Tel-Aviv based artist Noga Erez teams up with her partner Ori Rousso to reflect on the COVID-19 pandemic. In a press statement, she shares:  "This song was written during a period where I had more time than I've had in a decade. I was able to sit down and work my ass off on new music without any emails disturbing the silence. No notifications, nothing. I wanted to write a song that talked about that. I felt a deep need to imagine what it would be like to live in a world with no politics, money, grit, racism, or violence. [...] Singing about how ‘everybody’s free’ right now is such an incredible dissonance for me. It says exactly what it needs to say: not everyone is free. Actually most of us aren’t, but some of us are literally, physically not free. And that has to change fast." Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Fantastic Negrito - "How Long?" from the 2020 album Have You Lost Your Mind Yet? on Cooking Vinyl. With his past two albums, soulful singer/songwriter Fantastic Negrito (real name: Xavier Amin Dphrepaulezz) won Best Contemporary Blues Album at the Grammy Awards, and with his latest LP, Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?, he's poised for a hat-trick. On his new album, Negrito says, "I wanted to write about people I knew, people I grew up with, people whose lives I could personally affect, and whose lives have impacted me," adding, "It was the hardest album I’ve ever written." On today's Song of the Day, Negrito continues to ask the important questions; he tells Pollstar the title was inspired by author James Baldwin's query: “I haven’t got much time left – how long are we going to keep doing this?” He poses the question to "all perpetrators of violence," adding: "There’s so many topics. How long are we going to keep doing all the things we’re doing before we break? Because this is not very sustainable; because we can’t keep doing the same things we’ve been doing in this country for the last 40 or 50 years. You can only destroy, and that’s what we’ve done. It’s broken. Maybe this is just the catalyst for ending [white supremacy]. We’re in need of it. We need to turn it around if we’re going to survive." Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Arlo Parks - "Hurt," a 2020 single on Transgressive Records. London-based poet and artist Arlo Parks understands the pain of the pandemic, sharing the new single "Hurt" to commiserate with listeners. The soulful jam provides a hypnotic groove to showcase Parks' warm vocals and reassuring lyrics.  “‘Hurt’ surrounds the possibility of healing from pain and the temporary nature of suffering,” Parks said via a press statement. “It is supposed to uplift and comfort those going through hard times.” Parks told NME back in May that she's spending the lockdown working on her debut full-length, explaining "I’m trying to make it the best body of work that it can be. The album format is really important to me, and in terms of the music that I’ve put out thus far, I feel like I have a sonic identity, but there’s variation in what I put out so far, so I do have scope to experiment and explore different styles within my debut album, which feels exciting. I’m excited for what it could be.” Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Naked Giants - "Take A Chance" from the 2020 album The Shadow on New West Records. Seattle trio Naked Giants return this month with their sophomore album The Shadow, an album they say is "much more honest" than their 2018 debut full-length SLUFF.  “We’ve come to realize that the path to becoming a better person and bringing positivity into the world isn’t always linear, and there’s a lot of growth in taking an honest look at the “shadow-y” parts of life,” they told Spin Magazine. “Whether it’s personal anxiety and depression or collective guilt and trauma, there’s always a part of yourself that’s hard to confront and understand. But The Shadow is all about facing that darkness and having the strength to bring it into the light.”  As for today's Song of the Day, the guys call it, “...a new step in the dance-the-stress-away attitude we’ve had since the band was formed. This time around it’s a bit more focused – we’re exploring these big unanswered questions in our lives, like the mechanisms of privilege and oppression or the capitalist oxymoron of individualism and assimilation, and we’re pairing it all with a danceable backbeat to tell people it’s ok to get up off the couch and do something about it.”  Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Widowspeak - "Even True Love" from the 2020 album Plum on Captured Tracks. On their fifth full-length Plum, Brooklyn band Widowspeak continue to craft a dreamy folk-pop sound, punctuated by vocalist (and former Tacoma, WA native) Molly Hamilton's serenely-sweet vocals. In a press release, Hamilton shared: "Prior to writing “Even True Love,” I’d been sitting with some existential dread for the last year or so; honestly, sort of overwhelmed by the recognition that life is absurd and finite. The song itself is upbeat, kind of cruising. I was thinking about those youth-glorifying “yolo” type songs and that big mood, but also feeling like there’s so much more to it than that. Maybe because they only live once, humans tend to want to possess things: objects, success, money, experiences, people. True Love. Amassing the most and best of whatever while you can. But that never really landed with me; I think this one is more about being present with the unknown, letting things go a little more, trying not to hold on too tight." Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.