In Our Headphones

Floating Points - "Problems" a 2022 single on Pluto / Ninja Tune Throughout the year, British electronic musician Floating Points (aka Sam Shepherd) has been releasing some excellent stand-alone singles, including today's Song of the Day. Just last week, he announced the songs will be collected and released on limited vinyl for the first time on December 16th.  Today's featured track is accompanied by a video directed and produced by the creative team Hamill Industries, a frequent Floating Points collaborator. In a press statement, they wrote: "'Problems' is meant to agitate every single room that its ecstatic sound waves reach. We wanted to celebrate it with movement and dance and reshape it through sound, by using techniques that allow the sonification of images. We have used lasers that spin and move with the music, making visible their sinuous shapes. It was important that this video shaped the electrical feeling you get when being on a dancefloor, the urge of dancing when sound waves reach your ears." Read the full story at KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Empress Of - "Dance For You" from the 2022 Save Me EP on Major Arcana Brooklyn-based artist Empress Of (the electro-pop recording project of Lorely Rodriguez) released her five-song EP Save Me over the summer, which features the stand-out (and suitably-titled) track "Dance For You." “I love the lyrics on this song,” Rodriguez said in a press statement. “I made this in Minneapolis with BJ Burton. It was freezing outside. I was in a cave-like studio in the snow literally dancing as I wrote this. ‘Surrender to me like this’ is a touching lyric for me because I’m not hurt over this person anymore. I’ve come out the other side.” Read the full story at KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jason McCue - "Kingdom" from the 2022 album Screen, Turn On on Fluff & Gravy. KEXP has long been supporters and fans of local artist Jason McCue. First bursting on the scene as the 2017 winner of Sound Off!, which sees artists under 21 showcase their talent for a shot at the coveted prize. Since then, he’s gone on to release three records, 2018’s Pangaea, Wasteland in 2019, and, most recently, Screen, Turn On. Recorded during the pandemic, the record sees McCue grapple with his reliance on technology as the world became a more insular place. Our Song of the Day, “Kingdom,” hones in on other vices that often sneak up and then terrorize those in vulnerable headspaces. In the song, our narrator experiences a heavy night of drinking, leaving them lost and bloody, with their lover pleading with them to stay the night before doing anything else wreckless. In a tone that sounds as if Elliot Smith was reincarnated, McCue quavers “But my baby said to me /Don’t you go home /Stay here with me /I know you’ve been drinking all night long /Don’t you go home” over an urgently strummed acoustic guitar while another electric guitar offers warbled flourishes. The intensity of the message and the vulnerability of the narrator’s position is felt through the constantly changing dynamics that slow down at the end with layered vocals mimicking the narrator’s fading mind and resolve. Watch McCue’s KEXP in-studio performance of the song “Ocean" and read the full post at KEXP.org.Support the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Glüme - "Do Me a Favor," a 2022 single on Italians Do It Better. Describing Glüme could be easy - a wide-eyed chanteuse who channels equal parts Marilyn Monroe and Lana del Rey - but it would be reductive. Especially considering her status as one of the newest additions to the Italians Do It Better roster, who are known for their icey cool-as-hell synth-filled soundscapes. How does the pouty, Monroe-reincarnated pop princess fit in with the leather-clad cool kids? The answer is something along the lines of: the girl’s got chops. On our Song of the Day, “Do Me a Favor,” the latest single from Glüme, is an upbeat ode to the insecurities that often plague one’s mind from being burned too many times. How can you recognize if something is real after so many heartbreaks? Sometimes the answer is sometimes just in the other person making the bold moves. “Do me a favor and take me,” she begs. The single is off her forthcoming sophomore record Main Character, out on Valentine’s Day 2023 and follows 2021’s lauded The Internet. It comes with a gay western-themed video in which Glüme is dressed in a red leather dress and gets wooed by a cowgirl that leads them to an onslaught of debauchery in a tiny tumbleweed town. Watch the video, directed by George Baron, and read the full post at KEXP.org.Support the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

WITCH - "Waile" a 2022 single on Desert Daze/Partisan. It's been almost 40 years since WITCH (which stands for "We Intend To Cause Havoc") caused some havoc. The Zambia-based band were early adopters of the "Zamrock" sound, a combination of traditional African music with psychedelic rock, releasing seven albums back in the '70s and '80s. After Zambia-born hip-hop artist Sampa The Great featured them on her latest LP As Above, So Below, WITCH decided to reconvene, releasing the single "Waile." "'Waile' was one of the songs that I brought to the WITCH when I joined in 1978," explained keyboardist Patrick Mwondela via a press release. "While it was played live often back in the day, it was never recorded until the new formation of the band picked it up 43 years later during a rehearsal on an island in Kenya, where the band embraced it and made it their own. A few months after that, they gave it a new lease of life by recording it in Lusaka’s legendary DB Studios. Sang in my native language Luvale, the subject matter is a nostalgic wailing for home of ancient African tribes that would eventually settle in Zambia." Read the full story at KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Cuffed Up - "10 for 10," a 2022 single on Corduroy Recordings. Los Angeles-based trio Cuffed Up return with a punk-pop pep-rally anthem for anyone struggling with imposter syndrome. "It's deeply rooted in confidence," vocalist and guitarist Ralph Torrefranca told Atwood Magazine. "The dialogue in the song follows a creative, trying to understand the negative thoughts that plagues their mind every time they feel the imposter syndrome. The chorus is the heavy-handed conclusion that they arrive to every time but the bridge is the 'big aha! moment' where the character finally realizes that they are amazing at what they do and are in fact, 10/10." Read the full story at KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Winter - "sunday" from the 2022 album What Kind of Blue Are You? on Bar/None. Songwriter Samira Winter (who records as Winter) returns with her sophomore full-length, What Kind of Blue Are You?, described as an "emotional excavation of [her] purest self." The new album features guest appearances from artists like Hatchie and Sasami. "“I feel like I’ve come full circle, making an album that my 22-year-old self who just started Winter would love," she says in a press release. "It’s my inner shadow girl, revealing herself in all her brokenness, despair, and beauty.” Winter describes today's Song of the Day as "a fever dream meditation on social media toxicity," a topic she says is "always on my mind and generates a lot of fear and anxiety for me. It’s a critique on social media’s effect on mental health and contorted beauty standards for women." Read the full story at KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lydia Ramsey - “I Will Wait For You” from the 2022 self-released album Like A Dream. Lydia Ramsey is an Indianola, WA-born, Seattle-based Americana artist that’s been channeling the vintage folk sounds of Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt since 2016. Her wistful melodies and enchanting vocals and often simple in presentation: just a guitar or banjo, perhaps some twinkling piano, and showstealingly lovely coos. Her latest record Like A Dream was released in September and hones in on the collective thoughts, anxieties, and loneliness felt during the pandemic. Our Song of the Day “I Will Wait For You” is especially relatable looking back on those lockdown days but also for many still, as she speaks to a friend - or perhaps to herself - in the depths of despair, encouraging them to keep moving forward. “Running through your head /What if this lasts forever,” Ramsey quavers. “It’s bitter end in these days without being close together.” Resiliently, she presses on, hoping, waiting, and praying for the day in which things “will be better than ever.” Ramsey collaborated with a number of longtime musician-friends, engineer Johnny Bregar, and New York-based engineer/producer, D. James Goodwin (The National, Kevin Morby, Blitzen Trapper) on Like A Dream. Watch the intimate Jacob Rosen-directed video for “I Will Wait For You" and read the full post at KEXP.org.Support the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rival Consoles - “World Turns” from the 2022 album Now Is on Erased Tapes. Ryan Lee West has been making electronic music under the name Rival Consoles since 2007, experimenting with a diverse range of styles and influences primarily with analog equipment. His latest release Now Is was made during the pandemic and sees the English producer in a contemplative mood, painting an atmospheric kaleidoscope of occasionally glitchy sounds. He had this to say about the record: “There are some pieces that are influenced quite strongly by the isolation and anxiety of these times. There are also pieces which are more optimistic and vibrant, which I think is a consistent attitude of my records, as I want art to express many aspects of life.” Our Song of the Day, “World Turns,” thrums with spacey energy, slowly unfolding and retracting. Not quite a dancefloor jam, the song mimics the spinning orb we live on and the twinkling stars that sit amongst it, making the song a perfect late-night headphones listen. Check out Rival Consoles' Boiler Room set from 2016 and read the full post at KEXP.org.Support the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs - “When the Lights Go” from the 2022 album When the Lights Go on Nice Age. Over the past decade, Orlando Higginbottom has been thriving under the name Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs. The British producer scored a Grammy nomination for his collaboration with Bonobo, and has released several singles and EPs since his 2012 debut LP Trouble. Ten years later, he shares his sophomore full-length, When The Lights Go, which he says is "about love and the end of the world."  “I think that the record starts and all the ideas are quite direct, and then it gets murkier and murkier as it goes on,” he told Rolling Stone UK. But as we move further away from the lockdown, the apocalypse isn't quite as front of mind. “It’s kind of nice to get this material off my chest. The next record I’m working on is much more hopeful. I’ve come out and I’m very far over the other side now.” Read the full story at KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.