In Our Headphones

SHYGIRL - "SLIME" from the 2020 ALIAS EP on Because Music. London-based artist SHYGIRL is anything but. Born Blane Muise, she avoided using her real name – “which would come with its own set of implications and prejudices,” she explained to London in Stereo – and adopted the new moniker, explaining "like Picasso had his blue period, this is my Shygirl period." Her latest release – a 7-song EP appropriately titled ALIAS – she continues to explore her other identities, crafting four sub-personalities she calls Baddie, Bovine, Bonk, and Bae. She told Stereogum, "For me, it accentuates different sides of myself and I wanted to explain that better in giving them a whole entire life.” She adds, "At some point the lines are really blurry about what came before, and what exists now, I’m very much in Shygirl — that is my everyday. I’m still learning about what is wholly real for me. That’s the journey I’m on. I don’t know what other parts of myself are yet to rear their heads, but right now these are the most prominent.” Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Blu & Exile - "The American Dream" from the 2020 album Miles on Dirty Science Records. Rapper Blu and hip hop producer Exile returned last year for their first new full-length in eight years: Miles: From An Interlude Called Life (or just Miles for short), an expansive 20-track double LP. “We planted the seeds of creativity and grew about 40 plants,” Exile said in a press release. “We picked the ones that we thought were the best for an album, but that didn’t mean that the other flowers weren’t beautiful.” Today's Song of the Day is a reflective, yearning track features guest vocals from The Last, Artful Dodger, and Blu‘s childhood friend Miguel, now a Grammy Award winning artist in his own right.  Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Romero - "Troublemaker," a 2020 self-released single. Australian power-pop group Romero follow up last year's debut  “Honey / Neapolitan” 7" single with the new track "Troublemaker," a fun, upbeat, '80s-style sing-a-long about a frenemy making eyes at your man. The band's frontwoman Alanna Oliver explained to NME:  “Troublemaker” was born after a conversation I was having with my mum about a girl I knew… we both came to the conclusion that she was in love with my boyfriend and my mother called her a troublemaker hah! I was like “Yesssss mum!” I hung up the phone immediately, pulled over my car and started writing these lyrics. I was on my way to rehearsal and when I arrived Ferg was playing this new riff he had just written and it all fell into place that afternoon. It felt very serendipitous. Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sen Morimoto - "Love, Money Pt. 2" from the 2020 album Sen Morimoto on Sooper Records. Chicago-based artist Sen Morimoto's sophomore self-titled release is a genre-blending mix of hip-hop, pop, R&B, and jazz (Morimoto is also a classically-trained saxophonist). Today's Song of the Day is a sequel to a track off his 2017 EP It’s Late, a follow-up he explained to KEXP's Dusty Henry in this 2020 interview.  “The reason there can be a part two is because that thought never goes away,” Morimoto says. “How you define love for yourself and look for love for yourself is constantly changing. And I think also our understanding of why we need money or what the expectation is to have money or what richness is to your life – even outside of money – is constantly changing. How you survive under capitalism, how you shift your thinking under capitalism... These things are always changing.” Watch Morimoto perform LIVE on KEXP at Home here. Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Melenas - "No puedo pensar" from the 2020 album Dias Raros on Trouble in Mind Records. Hailing from Pamplona, Spain, indiepop quartet Melenas released their second album Dias Raros last year, their first to be released outside of their homeland. Today's Song of the Day combines garage rock with jangle-pop for a melodic, melancholy track.  “Waking up with an idea that has been looping around your brain since you went to sleep and stays there all day long, day by day. Who hasn’t been in that situation? Well, this is what this song is about: being in a mental block, emotionally down and trying to get out of that washing machine of thoughts, even if you have to take shortcuts,” the band says in a press release.  Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

SASSY 009 - "Maybe In The Summer" from the 2019 album KILL SASSY 009 EP on Luft Recordings. Once a trio, SASSY 009 is the solo project of 23-year-old Norwegian artist Sunniva Lindgård. Her latest EP KILL SASSY 009 is her first released alone. “I must say working by myself feels very natural,” she says in a press release. “For the past few years I've learnt to live with a lot of unexpected wavy stuff turning me upside down emotionally, while also seeing my musical career blossom. This two-sided lifestyle makes me create music for some reason, and the process evolves itself by my strong will of wanting to cut through the membrane between confusion and clarity.” For today's Song of the Day, she uses relentless beats to reflect her inner conflict. "'Maybe in the Summer' is a song about realizing you’re being taken advantage of by someone you thought had good intentions," Lindgård told The FADER. "The fast BPM and the intense movement in the song is a symbol of wanting to move on quickly, while also trying to understand how and what you feel towards this person and yourself as a result of this confusing behavior. Basically the sound of a confused mind and an eager will to shake this destructive pattern off." Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lina & Raül Refree - "Destino" from the 2020 album Lina_Raül Refree on Glitterbeat Records. In a career spanning over five decades, Amália Rodrigues established herself as the "Queen of Fado," a genre of music in Portugal. On their debut album Lina_Raül Refree, classically-trained Portuguese vocalist Lina and European producer Raül Refree team up to reinterpret songs from Rodrigues' expansive catalog. Together, they abandon the traditional acoustic guitars and substitute soaring synths to help update the sound.  “The record is different,” Lina says via their BandCamp page. “That was all we wanted to do. We’ve updated fado. But we only tried to make music that moves people.” “I didn’t know much fado before this,” Refree adds. ‘Now I feel it’s part of my life. Now I listen to Amália and I understand it more.” Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

alyona alyona - "Дикі танці" from the 2019 album В ХАТІ МА on Hitwonder. It's impressive enough that Alyona Alyona was nominated for the 2021 Music Moves Europe Talent Awards, but what's even more notable is, it's the very first time a Ukrainian artist has appeared on their list of nominees. The rapper, whose real name is Alyona Savranenko, became a break-out star in Europe since leaving behind her job as an elementary school teacher to follow her pre-teen dreams of performing hip-hop. Her lyrics cover topics of body positivity and female empowerment, all sung in her homeland's language.  “That’s part of my life,” she told The World public radio program. “I’ve encountered a lot of body shaming, fat shaming, bullying in my life. But mostly it’s people who motivate me because they keep asking, 'How can you be so cool?' I tell them I’m like everyone else, I just accepted myself the way I am. I realized people need my experience and I started sharing it. With some — in messages, with others — in songs.” Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Julia Bardo - "I Wanna Feel Love" from the 2020 Phase EP on Wichita Recordings. From singing between shifts at her father's bar in Northern Italy, to joining the post-punk band Working Men’s Club in Manchester, England, songwriter Julia Bardo now emerges on her own with her debut solo EP Phase, co-produced by Henry Carlyle Wade of The Orielles. Today's Song of the Day is an exuberant, '60s-girl-group-inspired track, with lyrics that draw from Bardo's personal experience with love. “I was in a relationship that didn’t work for me,” Bardo explains, via a press release. “I felt like I lost my inspiration —there was no colour in my life. I started to think, 'Is this how I want my life to be? Is my life over at 24? Is this really the way I want to be loved?' So, I started to write about the way I see love. I’ve always wanted to feel special for someone, I’ve always wanted a fiery and intense, passionate love. And eventually I got it." Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi Crime - "World's Fair," a 2020 self-released single. Seattle's Hi Crime was formed in the summer of 2015 when songwriters Brielle Rutledge and Mitch Etter met. Their debut EP, Foreign Hours, was written, recorded, and mixed entirely from their bedrooms, with Rutledge commuting back-and-forth every few weeks while she finished college. They expanded into a full band with the addition of Cody McCann and Jesse Botello, and their 2018 full-length debut album, The Kids Still Got It, found them evolving their DIY home recordings with Deep Sea Diver’s mixing engineer Luke Vander Pol and KEXP's own mastering engineer Matt Ogaz. Today's Song of the Day is their first new music in a year.  The accompanying video below was directed by the band themselves with shooting and editing by Dylan Randolph, and was inspired when Etter found a Ferris Wheel toy on OfferUp. In a press release, he explains, "I liked the idea of building a small set out of toys with that Ferris wheel, my old model train set, and anything else childlike we could dig up. I’m not sure if it comes across in the video, but in my mind, all of the real world footage is actually taking place on that cheap looking set. It’s fictional world building where your tiny ideas can grow to the scale limits you’re capable of imagining." Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.