An ode to human curation, Cut Copy Live From HQ, SML on Press Play, and key December music events across LA.
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Dearest Music Insiders,
After a busy few weeks at the K, our overall Best Of 2025 lists are locked and loaded. Personally, I’m still noodling on my individual list (forthcoming!), but it all has me in an existential conversation with myself about where, and how, I find the new sounds that end up as my faves of the year.
After all that noodling... I’d like to posit: on the algorithm. They may be able to do some amazing, computer science-y things, but they do not surprise and delight… They are boring. They are vanilla-scented candles. The algorithm asks nothing of us, and dishes out music with the same vibe, BPM, genre, or whatever other singular piece of data-based guidance it has plucked, over and over and over again.
Human curation, on the other hand, is messy. It requires thought, effort, and passion. It requires us selectors to become intrepid explorers, let go of control in favor of embracing the unknown. It demands us to be present and open-minded, to push through discomfort and step over interior thresholds.
And that, friends, is what I love about KCRW Music and our DJs. Every day, they are free-soloing through the world of music to find new treasures to share with you. When I first came to KCRW, Chris Douridas was our Music Director. At my very first DJ meeting, he laid out the rules. Or really, the rule — singular. And it is closely held by us all to this day.
“PLAY WHAT YOU LOVE!” I’m using all caps here because that is the intensity with which he declared it. Our mission as DJs at the K was to dig through crates, push past the norm, traverse city blocks and warehouse after-hours to find music that we couldn’t stand to wait another moment before sharing with you. So that’s what our DJs do, tirelessly and with love.
Just the other day, we were in a modern-day iteration of that same music meeting, and Chris reiterated the very same philosophy, and once again did it loudly, to make the point. KCRW has never wavered in its music ethos, in our mission of human curation. And I’m grateful for it — just like you, I have discovered artists and songs I would never have unearthed had I paid one bit of attention to the algorithm.
Australian synth-pop band Cut Copy paid a visit to the KCRW Annenberg Performance Studio, performing tracks from their 2025 releaseMomentsand bringing a nostalgic infusion of indietronica to our airwaves.
Indietronica, back in the early aughts, felt like a secret handshake. People called it “indietronica” because no one had a better word for indie songs welded onto drum machines and cheap synths. It carried the feeling that you’d just discovered something bright but a little bruised, hopeful but weirdly private. Somewhere between joy, anxiety, and the glow of your monitor, bands like Matt & Kim, Miike Snow, and Hot Chip made music for shouting with your friends, then staring out the bus window alone on the way home.
Cut Copy were always one of the bands that understood the quiet emotional architecture of that world. During their session at KCRW, they distilled indietronica to its essence — all glow, no rush, something you recognize before you even remember where it came from.
LA-based improvisational quintet SML are an LA-based quintet blurring the lines between jazz and electronica.
Bassist Anna Butterss and saxophonist Josh Johnson joined Madeline Brand on Press Play to discuss their music and performances, which are entirely improvised and never rehearsed.
Novena Carmel, Francesca Harding,and KCRW’s Music DirectorAle Cohenwill bring a lively soundtrack toCorita Kent: The Sorcery of Imageswith a day of live DJ sets inspired by the artist’s vibrant spirit and radical playfulness.
Throughout the day, genre-spanning track selections will respond in real time to Corita Kent’s images, translating her colors, words, and energy into a site-specific listening experience that fills the Theater Gallery. Just as the artist transformed the visual language of pop culture into art with purpose, KCRW reimagines her world through sound, weaving music, emotion, and movement into the exhibition’s pulse.
12 PM: Ale Cohen (DJ Set)
1 PM: Francesca Harding (DJ Set)
3 PM: Novena Carmel (DJ Set)
5 PM: Listening Session: The Music of Sister Irene O’Connor and Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru
Saturday, December 13th — Suzanne Ciani: A Journey to the Edges of Dimensional Sound + Light on her Out of the Ocean Tour @ First Congregational Church of LA
Saturday, December 13th — microdazing: a new kind of after hours @ Camille’s at the Bellwether
KCRW 1900 Pico Blvd. Santa Monica, CA 90405 You received this email because you are subscribed to Music Insider from KCRW. Update your email preferences to choose the types of emails you receive. Unsubscribe from all future emails.
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