Image courtesy Decibel Festival

Learn all about Decibel here, Seattle's world-famous music/art/culture festival happening September 26-30. The partial lineup revealed so far includes an international array of bleeding-edge electronic music producers like Actress, from England, as well as underground American pop acts Ariel Pink and Julianna Barwick.

London noiR&B trio The xx performs in Seattle 7/25 at Showbox at the Market, according to Ticketmaster. The group is expected to release a second album sometime this year, following its sensational first. Currently they have the Internet buzzing after performing a bunch of new songs live. Listen to those here. Above is a demo they released last Christmas, "Open Eyes."

Local band Witch Gardens always presents itself fashionably, a rarity in Seattle where polar fleece and socks/sandals routinely show up in symphony audiences. But what's really cool to me is how the quartet's aesthetic extends beyond clothes. After decorating concert stages over the past few years with homemade banners and paintings, Witch Gardens puts its Wes Anderson-esque style on full display in the video for "Aunt Shae/Mean Colleen," a key track from their recent "R-I-P" EP, freely downloadable here.

Video credits copied from vimeo:

Bobby McHugh (Director)
Miles Burnett (Director of Photography)
Patrick Richardson Wright (Editor & Camera)
Kyle Johnson (Co-Producer)
Christopher Harrell (Colorist)

Legato Bebop photo by Pierce Adler

"Holiday" by Legato Bebop

Seattle guitar player, singer and sample-arranger extraordinaire Legato Bebop recently played his first concert at the Redmond Fire House. Sources say it was a mind-blower. Listen to a live recording of the song "Holiday" above, presumably from that concert, and see a list of upcoming Legato Bebop performances below — with the first one happening Wednesday in the U. District at Rat and Raven.

Listen to Legato Bebop's dazzling debut album "Jargon" here.

May 23 at The Rat and the Raven
June 15 at Cairo
June 24 at Comet Tavern

Looking for local summer music? Start here with these reviews by twos. Binding forces include Fleet Foxes, geography and Internet radio. Sound interesting? Read on!

Art via Couple Skate Records

"Freaks Easy" by Numbs

The creative activity around Cairo has gotten a shot in the arm recently thanks to Couple Skate Records — run by mainstays of the lively Capitol Hill retail/gallery space putting out their peers' music. Their newest transmission is the sunny, industrial "Freaks Easy" from Seattle act Numbs, aka Jeff Johnson. Listen to the track above. Numbs' debut album "People" comes out on Couple Skate July 15.

Warning: swearing

"You Know How We Do" by Jay Park feat. Dumbfoundead

Korea-via-Edmonds singer/rapper/dancer Jay Park has a new mixtape out, "Fresh Air: Breathe !t." Download using the link below. Listen to my pick for the best song above, the slumping Bay Area-inspired rap track "You Know How We Do."

mediafire.com/?xieq3xu1med2m...BLAMMMMM FREE MUSIC SON!!!!!!!!!

— JAY BUM PARK (@JAYBUMAOM) May 16, 2012

Hale-Bopp was the Bedouins (Shabazz Palaces Remix feat the palaceer, fly guy Dai and Thadillac mixed by Blood in palaGlow)

In case you can't understand the description of the personel behind "Hale-Bopp was the Bedouins" copied from soundcloud above: "fly guy Dai" is Tendai Maraire of Seattle rap duo Shabazz Palaces, Blood is Shabazz's producer Erik Blood and Thadillac is local soul / R&B force Thaddeus Turner. The Palaceer is Palaceer Lazaro of course, the main voice in Shabazz Palaces, rapper and producer extraordinaire. His golden vocals and smeary way with sound are all over this drastically remixed version of a much more straightforward but still pretty trippy song by Lushlife and Heems, who make rap music out of Philadelphia and New York City, respectively.

Sweeping graveyard rock ballad by Seattle duo Baby Guns; black & white video by American Ghost Dancer. Stay tuned for the lone color frame at 3:10 — the Virgin Mary with pumpkins all around her. See a Baby Guns fashion shoot here.

Now that I listen to this song again, I realize what a sentimental mood I was in last night — it was Mother's Day, after all. But driving back to Seattle from the Eastside around 11 p.m. and hearing venerable DJ Riz Rollins play Ernesto's "Reelin'" on KEXP 90.3 FM, that glassy, warm combo of piano and voice cut all the way to my heart. I looked at the digital readout on my car dash and vowed to remember the track. Genre says it comes from deep house; I say it can be called "night bus," soulful music which sounds best while cruising through urban areas at night. Both are specialities of Rollins' late-night show "Expansions" with co-hosts Kid Hops and Masa. What "Expansions" does on KEXP is cast audio spells for that hypnotizable time between asleep and awake. The radio station has an international listenership at kexp.org, but "Expansions" doesn't necessarily coincide with the time of day in, say, Sweden, where "Reelin'" was released on Rakkaus Records. It all adds up in Seattle, though, where you can find KEXP on the terrestrial dial. And I'm glad it does, because I've had more than one transformative experience with "Expansions," and am roughly the one billionth Seattleite who can say last night Riz Rollins saved my life.

Fun fact: the source material of Ernesto's "Reelin'" is "Liberian Girl" by Michael Jackson.

I won't be blogging for the next two weeks. I'll be in Korea, eating kimchi and riding the subway, looking at neon signs and beautiful mountains. In the meantime please enjoy the work of another Seattleite in Korea: Jay Park. His "Abandoned" video is above; his other work is easily Googleable. Park went to Edmonds Woodway High School in the early 2000s and then left for the world of K-Pop — a take on modern American heartthrob dance bands and hip-hop/R&B. He remains connected to Seattle via the Art of Movement b-boy crew. Of all his songs I've heard I like "Abandoned" the best. Especially those creepy strings.

"Please stop the gun violence. Stop the knife violence. The chemical warfare — let's stop that. Biological warfare — let's stop that. Who knows about hydraulic fracking? Let's stop fracking!"

The quotes above come from a lecture made up on the spot by 22-year-old East San Francisco Bay Area native Lil B at New York University. It's rare that a popular rapper speaks about feeling so deeply for the world. But Lil B has a new deal: compassion that starts in the brain.

Later in the speech, he delivers his mission statement: "Real talk, don't ever deny the voices in your head."

Lil B will play his first Seattle concert Sunday at Neumos to a cult following he has built on the Internet in the last couple of years, shouting himself into existence on social media like Twitter and Tumblr. Fans will greet him by doing the lighthearted "cooking dance" he started on YouTube and that has since gone viral, emulated in NFL endzones.

Lil B releases albums for free, online, just about monthly. They are full of major emotional highs and lows and technical mistakes are left in. His recordings flout "good" audio in favor of rough 'n' ready fidelity, a deal breaker for traditionalists but no problem for many kids.

Lil B calls his style "#based," a spontaneous, bugged-out approach to rap that is a bit hippie-ish, crisscrossing genres from ambient to hip-hop. His best and most "#based" songs are similar: "I'm God" (2009) and "I Hate Myself" (2011), both dreamy capsules for the ages, equal parts hip-hop and critique of the genre, which Lil B seems to find stuffy and puffed-up. His answer is free expression.

Lil B's project is also about the modern male, who in hip-hop is definitely less macho than he used to be and arguably is in the wider world, too. Lil B wears women's clothing in videos and enjoys confusing bullies, who in rap are often homophobic.

But maybe most deeply, Lil B's music is about life on the Internet, where social media allows us to make a second self. As we make that jump, we need to decide how real to make our new life. Lil B has decided to be doggedly transparent.

Suffice to say, he is a man for his time. And the only rapper who will say, "Let's stop fracking!"

Photo by Cameron Krone

Art by Naomi Punk

Listen to "The Feeling" album by Seattle/Olympia band Naomi Punk above or right here. The title track is my jam these days. The whole album is worth your time if you like heavy rock without a lot of macho energy. But it's more nuanced than that. Review forthcoming.