In Our Headphones

Squid - "Narrator (feat. Martha Skye Murphy)" from the 2021 album Bright Green Field on Warp. After a series of stand-alone singles and an EP, Brighton, England-based band Squid have announced their debut album, Bright Green Field, out May 7th via Warp. Today's Song of the Day features guest vocals from Martha Skye Murphy, to help make "the point that the unreliable narrator is, more often than not, a male who wishes to portray women as submissive characters in their story." The band continue in a press release: "'Narrator' was inspired by the 2019 film A Long Day’s Journey Into Night. The song follows a man who is losing the distinction between memory, dream, and reality, and how you can often mold your memories of people to fit a narrative that benefits your ego. After some discussions with Martha she thought it’d be a good idea that she play the part of the woman wanting to break free from the dominating story the male has set​." Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jupiter & Okwess - "You Sold Me a Dream (feat. Ana Tijoux)" from the 2021 album Na Kozonga on Everloving Records. Congolese band Jupiter & Okwess team up with Chilean artist Ana Tijoux for an infectious track with a powerful message, a song Jupiter declared an "anthem of resistance." Against an electronic tribal rhythm, Tijoux states: [Google translated] From Congo to the world From Congo to Latin America and Africa complete Against all racism the music is heard loud, loud, hear it Today's Song of the Day will be released on Jupiter & Okwess' forthcoming full-length, Na Kozonga, out April 23rd. Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Team Dreams - "Imaginary Love," a 2021 self-released single. One of the (many) highlights of our 2018 Iceland Airwaves Music Festival broadcast was the appearance of Icelandic supergroup Team Dreams, a project of longtime friends Sin Fang (aka Sindri Már Sigfússon), Sóley, and Örvar Smárason. (We're going to assume they landed on the band name "Team Dreams," even though a couple of years ago they claimed it was just the title of their debut LP, joking they were "too old to come up with a new band name at this point in their careers.") Upon their return, they've announced they'll be releasing a new song every month this year, kicking off the ambitious project with today's Song of the Day. February's track was soon to follow, and we can't wait to see what they launch for March! Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

serpentwithfeet - "Fellowship (feat. Sampha & Lil Silva)" from the 2021 album DEACON on Secretly Canadian. Earlier this year, Los Angeles-via-Baltimore artist serpentwithfeet announced his sophomore album, DEACON, out March 26 via Secretly Canadian. In a press release, he explains that the new LP is "not only imagining but exploring a world wherein Black love is paramount." On today's Song of the Day, he examines the world of friendship, teaming up with guest artists Sampha and Lil Silva, who co-wrote, co-produced, and join serpent on the song’s chorus, chanting “I’m so thankful for my friends/ I’m thankful for the love I share with my friends.” “I dedicate ‘Fellowship’ to anyone who has had a good friend or been a good friend,” serpentwithfeet states simply in a press release. Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Corvair - "Sailor Down" from the 2021 album Corvair on Where It’s At Is Where You Are. KEXP is a listener-funded nonprofit, and we need your help to keep creating podcasts like this one. Donate to our Spring Drive today! Portland duo Corvair made the most of quarantine by turning out their self-titled debut while on lockdown. The two had recorded plenty of times with their previous bands — Ruston Mire, Tube Top, Pop Sickle, The Service Providers for Brian Naubert and Eux Autres for Heather Larimer — but this was a whole new experience for the music veterans. “Recording and writing new music without the benefit of testing ideas in front of a live audience was strange,” said Naubert in a press release. “But ultimately, it gave us the freedom to really play with ideas and explore things we hadn’t ever tried before.” The intimacy of the stay-at-home orders also allowed the couple to express themselves more freely. “These are definitely the most exposed and truthful lyrics we have ever written,” Naubert states, “And musically, we just went for it. We didn’t try to talk ourselves out of weird moves, like laying some Mamas and Papas-style harmonies next to a Cars-esque keyboard solo or aggressive guitar work.” “We are so happy that our first singles have had such an excellent response," Larimer adds, “That our particular cocktail of feelings and sounds is connecting with people.”  Read the full post on KEXP.org KEXP is a listener-funded nonprofit, and we need your help to keep creating podcasts like this one. Donate to our Spring Drive today!Support the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

GHLOW - "Not Fit For This" from the 2021 album Slash and Burn on PNKSLM. KEXP is a listener-funded nonprofit, and we need your help to keep creating podcasts like this one. Donate to our Spring Drive today! When electro-punk project GHLOW named their debut album Slash and Burn, they meant it. The Russian-Swedish duo sought to capture the intensity of their live performances on the new LP. “After the [first] EP, we realised we wanted the album to be harder,” vocalist and bassist Emille de Blanche stated in a press release. “When we play live, it’s a physical experience — in the early days, we blew a lot of sound systems because the loudness was so important to us. There’s an intensity to that — a feeling of just wanting to be this vehicle speeding at 110 kil-ometres per hour — and we think we’ve captured it.” “There’s a rawness and a violence to Slash and Burn, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing,” adds her partner, multi-instrumentalist Nikolay Evdokimov. “It’s about starting again. You might be chopping things down, or setting fire to something, but that’s a reset — something positive comes out of the flames.”  Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Antlers - "Solstice" from the 2021 album Green to Gold on ANTI-. KEXP is a listener-funded nonprofit, and we need your help to keep creating podcasts like this one. Donate to our Spring Drive today! Brooklyn duo The Antlers return later this month with their first new album in seven years, titled Green to Gold. Frontman Peter Silberman describes the LP in a press release as "Sunday morning music," adding that today's Song of the Day "is a flashback to the infinite days of peak childhood summer, innocent barefoot hikes, staying outside all afternoon and late into the evening, well past it being too dark to see. But it’s remembered from the vantage of a present day that feels unbearably long rather than joyously endless. It’s an invocation of those simpler times, an attempt to conjure the lightness of youth, before life got so damn complicated.” "I think the shift in tone is the result of getting older," he continues. "It doesn’t make sense for me to try to tap into the same energy that I did ten or fifteen years ago, because I continue to grow as a person, as I’m sure our audience does too. Green To Gold is about this idea of gradual change. People changing over time, struggling to accept change in those they love, and struggling to change themselves. And yet despite all our difficulty with this, nature somehow makes it look easy." Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

春ねむり (Haru Nemuri) - "bang," a 2021 single on TO3S. KEXP is a listener-funded nonprofit, and we need your help to keep creating podcasts like this one. Donate to our Spring Drive today! Japanese artist Haru Nemuri (春 ねむり) (real name: Haruna Kimishima) is an alchemist, combining J-Pop with hip-hop, electronica, and noise. She calls today's Song of the Day a "prayer," inspired after the election of Donald Trump four years ago. In a beautifully-written statement on her website, she writes: ...we are divided deeper and deeper because a variety of human beings have used the ways like ones that Donald Trump has done many a time not only during his administration but in his life. We are all different in the point of what we feel and think, and we’re never enable to understand each other. And then, we have the only way to oppose this division getting deeper. It is to engage in dialogue anyway. We should upgrade our thought intermittently by talking each other to make this society by ourselves. In order to do that, we have to imagine others’ sadness, anger and pain existing certainly now, knowing the fact that we can’t understand completely each other. She concludes, "During our life, we might have painful experiences that we wouldn't be able to forget. Though in this world we are losing the subjects to which we should pray because something like the religion, race, gender and blood relation doesn’t decide our identity at all in the present times, I’m now finding hope in ‘prayer’ itself." Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bicep - "Sundial" from the 2021 album Isles on Ninja Tune. KEXP is a listener-funded nonprofit, and we need your help to keep creating podcasts like this one. Donate to our Spring Drive today! London-based electronic duo Bicep dig into their Northern Ireland childhoods on their latest LP Isles, and today's Song of the Day takes us from Ireland to India. Belfast-born producers Matt McBriar and Andy Ferguson used a snippet of the song "Jab Andhera Hota Hai" from the 1973 Bollywood film Raja Rani.  “This is probably one of the simplest tracks on the album, it grew from a faulty Jupiter 6 arp recording. Our trigger isn't working properly and the arp skips notes randomly. This was a small segment taken from a recording of Andy just playing the arp live whilst we were just trying to figure out what was going wrong. We actually loved what it had produced and wrote some chords around it, guided by the feeling of this recording.” “In regards to the sampling, Indian music has always fascinated us since the blog days, discovering it was the possible birthplace of Acid house via Charanjit Singh’s Ten Ragas to a disco beat.” “Living in East London, Indian influence and music is everywhere and over the past few years we’ve both become huge fans of Bollywood film scores, particularly the female soprano performances. The haunting melancholic epicness really strikes a chord with both of us. We feel we can relate to how similar it is to the Irish folk we grew up around from the likes of the Clannad.” Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jessica Manning - "Safe Another Day" from the 2021 self-released You Are Here EP. Raised by a father who loved singing soul, Minneapolis-based R&B artist Jessica Manning grew up with a love for music and would sing Broadway show tunes in the privacy of her childhood bedroom. By the age of 15, she began playing guitar, posting covers (and sometimes an original!) on YouTube.  She's come a long way since then, beginning with the 2013 release of her self-titled EP. On her most recent release, January's EP You Are Here, she teams up with her longtime partner Zach Brose on production and co-writing. Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.