In Our Headphones

Wax Tailor - "Just a Candle (feat. Mark Lanegan)" from the 2021 album The Shadow of Their Suns on Lab'Oratoire. French producer Wax Tailor returned this year with his first new album in five years, The Shadow Of Their Suns, a star-studded affair featuring special guests like Del the Funky Homosapien, D Smoke, Gil Scott-Heron, Adeline, and, on today's Song of the Day, Mark Lanegan of The Screaming Trees. In a statement to Under the Radar, Tailor explains:  “I started working on the demo, early 2019 & immediately called it ‘Candle.’ I had this vision of a candle as an allegory of life. The candle that illuminates us, burns out, and one day turns off. I had scenes in mind and I wanted to play on the contrast between a dry and dark rhythm and incandescent arrangements to illustrate this path of life. I added the gimmick of the blown candle that illustrates the unknown. I then invited Mark who injected his print to the song.” “The first time I heard Mark Lanegan I was still in high school, and his friend Kurt Cobain was still alive. 30 years later, it’s hard to get into an exhaustive list of his discography, between the Screaming Trees, his solo albums, his albums with Isobel Campbell, Queen Of The Stone Age, and many others. I’ve been hoping for a long time that one day I’d have a title for him. When I started the demo, I immediately thought it was the right one. I contacted him in the spring of 2019 to propose it and he answered me in the simplest way possible. We met during his last tour in France and we continued to work remotely. I am very proud of this title, this meeting, and what Mark brings to it. In a music industry where bending your back is often a conditioned reflex, Mark is a great humble man who goes through the decades without artifice, with talent and righteousness.” Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Reds, Pinks & Purples - "Don't Ever Pray in the Church on My Street" from the 2021 album Uncommon Weather on Slumberland. With his project The Reds, Pinks and Purples, San Francisco-based singer/songwriter Glenn Donaldson pays tribute to his hometown with his third and latest album, Uncommon Weather. The Inner Richmond district is captured in muted, pastel colors on the album artwork, giving it a nostalgic feel, mournful for the days when it was a reasonable place for musicians and artists to live. Uncommon Weather was self-recorded and mostly self-performed, with Donaldson channeling his hero Dan Treacy of Television Personalities.   Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Morcheeba - "Sounds of Blue" from the 2021 self-released album Blackest Blue. Trip-hop trailblazers Morcheeba return with their tenth album, Blackest Blue, which comes out this Friday. Vocalist Skye Edwards and multi-instrumentalist Ross Godfrey used the lockdown to really take their "time to write songs and really get to hone them." Edwards adds in their press release, "There weren’t so many pressures so we could really take our time getting the songs right." Today's Song of the Day is a dreamy slice of down-tempo soul with Edwards' singing of her free diving experience in Thailand and her “new found confidence and love of the ocean above and below.”  Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Yard Act - "Dark Days," a 2021 single on Zen F.C. Leeds-based post-punk band Yard Act found inspiration in an animated cave dweller for their latest single "Dark Days." Singer/songwriter James Smith says it's “the last of four singles before we start work on the album, of which none of those songs will be on.” For today's Song of the Day, he shares in a press release: With 'Dark Days.' I wrote the first verse and chorus hook quite fast but then I didn’t know how to finish it. The demo Ryan [Needham, bandmate and formerly of Menace Beach] sent was ace, real sparse. The drums were really driven but the bassline felt like it was suspended mid-air in the verses, like a dub bassline or something. It created the illusion that you have time to stop and look around amidst the ensuing chaos. It’s like in war films when all the noise stops and you just hear the protagonist’s heavy breathing whilst they survey their surroundings in slow motion. Then the chorus hit with this “Captain Caveman” vibe, it reminded me of that stop-motion cartoon from the '90s ‘GOGS’ if anyone remembers that? I liked the juxtaposition of the bleak world with the cartoon bass line. Despite all the advances humanity has made, the threat of devolving feels increasingly possible in the modern world, and on my bad days when I’m spiraling I can’t help but get trapped in my own head envisioning this post-apocalyptic future we’re seemingly headed toward, so fuck knows why I decided to watch Children Of Men when I was feeling like that. If I’d fully remembered what happened in it, I don’t think I would’ve in the middle of a pandemic, but I did, and I actually came away feeling really uplifted by the ending. I saw hope in it, and it helped me finish the story. Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We're taking a week off from posting podcasts and other online content, but you can always find a live DJ streaming on KEXP.org, the KEXP App, or 90.3 FM in Seattle. New episodes will return to your Song of the Day feed on Monday, April 19th! Until then, visit old episodes or explore our other podcasts, Sound & Vision, Live on KEXP, and The Weekly Mix. And if you haven't had the chance yet, there's still time to take the KEXP Podcast Survey.Support the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EsePax - "Senzu Bean (feat. Dre'Zy)," a 2021 single on El Ambiente. Seattle DJ and hip-hop artist EsePax managed to get Renton-based MC Dre'Zy "out of retirement" (as he says) for the new single "Senzu Bean," named for the mystical beans in the Dragon Ball manga series. Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lorine Chia & D*L*P - "Go Far (feat. Bigmouf’ Bo)," a 2021 self-released single. Cameroonian-born, LA-based singer Lorine Chia has had a decade-long career collaborating with rappers like Machine Gun Kelly, Wiz Khalifa, and The Game. On today's Song of the Day, she teams up with producer/composer Devin "D*L*P" Parker, with guest vocals from nglewood, Chicago's Bigmouf’ Bo, a former contestant on Chance the Rapper's Netflix series Rhythm + Flow. Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Lasso - "No Illusions (feat. Ill Camille & A. Billi Free)" from the 2021 album 2121 on Mello Music Group. Detroit-based producer Andy Catlin records under the name The Lasso, an apt title as he's able to round up a dozen guest rappers and vocalists for his latest album 2121. (Today's Song of the Day brings in the vocal talents of New Mexico-based vocalist A. Billi Free and Los Angeles-based rapper Ill Camille.) These collaborators received instrumental demos created throughout 2019 and early 2020, and, as The Lasso told Bandcamp, “the finished product wasn’t something I would have ever thought of or composed.” “Some of the harmonies, nobody thought of them [first],” he continued, “because I sent the track out to three people at the same time, and they didn’t hear each other. They sent their work back to me, and I used one of each of their notes.”  Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Noname - "Rainforest," a 2021 self-released single. Since the release of her outstanding 2018 debut, Room 25, Chicago rapper Noname (real name: Fatimah Nyeema Warner) has stepped away from music a little, focusing on social justice by reading books on anti-capitalism, sharing resources and links to non-profit organizations on Twitter, and then in 2019, launching the Noname Book Club, a way for her to "highlight progressive work from writers of Color and writers within the LGBTQ community" with books being donated to those who are incarcerated. With her triumphant return to music, she speaks out against mass rainforest destruction, tweeting, "anyone who listened to my new song rainforest should read and share this." The single was produced by The Kount and features additional vocals from Adam Ness; and, it's the lead single from her just-announced album Factory Baby (release date TBA). She also tweeted that there would be no merch to support the song, but encouraged fans to donate to the Noname Book Club Patreon to help them send more books to incarcerated members. Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Beautiful Chorus - "I Am (feat. India.Arie)," a 2021 self-released single. Beautiful Chorus is a group that truly lives up to its name. The project was launched in 2021 by Alexandra Love, previous vocalist for Solillaquists of Sound and Chakra Khan. With Beautiful Chorus, she aimed to "spread a harmony-infused soundscape of interconnectedness, ease, and joy," a goal they've surely surpassed with their beautiful, introspective pieces. Today's Song of the Day pairs them with the Grammy Award-winning R&B artist India.Arie. On their YouTue page, the state, "this song is about reaching the inner chamber of ourselves, summoning forth all we desire, and deeply realizing that we have all we need and are all we desire to be." Read the full post on KEXP.orgSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.