Seeing a lot of "Here's the best music of the first half of 2026" lists, so here's mine: 1. WU LYF - A Wave That Will Never Break 2. Sparta - Cut A Silhouette 3. Grade 2 - Talk About It 4. Lala Lala - Heaven 2 5. Hemi Hemingway - Wings Of Desire 6. Twilight Sad - It's The Long Goodbye 7. Social Distortion - Born To Kill 8. Brigitte Calls Me Baby - Irreversible 9. Chinese American Bear - Dim Sum & Then Some 10. Hannah Lew - Hannah Lew Looking forward to in 2nd half: Menzingers, Jack White, The Strokes, Parts & Labor, Mystery Jets, Wild Pink, Interpol, Brian Fallon, Wishy

Wondering if there are certain artists you would like to hear on KEXP that aren't played. I LOVE and rely on KEXP to keep me sane every day, so not trying to beat up on anyone. Specifically, and I’m sure I’ve mentioned it in other posts, I love CMAT’s music. Alone, with John Grant, all of it. I think her voice and songwriting are amazing. But she can be polarizing. That’s never stopped KEXP, and that’s a good thing. Just wondering if there are moratoriums in certain artists.

Weird bit of a title; bare with me. I'm a big "lyric guy" when it comes to music. The messages artist put into the song, even if I'm interpreting it my own way, mean something. in the moment; over the years; whatever. Lyrics matter. (which as an aside is fun, because I'm also a big fan of electronic music with _zero_ lyrics. Hilarious.) The odd thing about how much importance I place in lyrics is that I often Do Not Register the lyrics of a song I like. Not immediately or even over a period of years. But at the same time there are tracks I can sing along to verbatim, pitch and all, that I haven't heard in decades. The point being that I'll hook onto a song sometimes, not knowing what the hell the artist is saying. I'll just know. No Idea what they're singing. No idea what the words are. But it still hits. And that's beautiful, because the song is more than the lyrics. The lyrics are just a part. The sounds so strong a part of the song that I can feel what's being said. I don't think I'm alone here with this crew. I was reminded of this while listening to a track by 'iamamiwhoami' called 'idle talk'. This song broke me a while back. Not on first listen, not on third. But the moment hit, and it was everything. Music heals - sometimes in mysterious ways. In January of 2020, at the cusp of middle age, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. If you don't know what that means, it's an auto-immune disease. It has nothing to do with what you eat, how much you exercise, or how much weight you have. I was an extremely physically active 130 lb, 5'9" stick. Didn't matter. My pancreas nope'd out and now I had to learn the mysteries of insulin. There's a joke among insulin dependent diabetics; goes something like this: Too much insulin will kill you. Not enough insulin will kill you. So you ask your body, how much insulin do you need!? And your body responds, "It's a secret." Hilarious. Y'know, when your life depends on guessing the correct amount of insulin you need at every moment of every day. Anyway.

Having grown up in Seattle, it would be tough to not go in that direction, but I could also be happy eating bbq in Austin just listening to Spoon and The Black Angels.

This past week's 5x5 delightfully careens across genres and decades