There’s an intriguing performance installation going on right now at the Skirball Cultural Center. home sweet home is more interactive experience than gallery exhibition, encouraging visitor participation in the construction of the Los Angeles community in miniature.
A few of our DJs have been on hand to provide the soundtrack and home sweet home concludes Sunday, October 3 with a Block Party featuring DJ Marion Hodges on the decks from 5-7pm. Find out more here

From DJ Marion Hodges:
Magic Kids are a pop BAND.  Each song on their debut album “Memphis,” a nod to the Tennessee city they call home, has the distinct feel of a group of people working together in a very harmonious fashion. They’ve crafted each piece of each song into a grandiose spectacle of sound, with the ultimate result of an eleven track, twenty-eight minute, blast of fun. Check out their new video for the song “Superball.”
Basically, “Memphis” is the exact kind of record that will make you want to dance …

KCRW DJs Marion Hodge and Mario Cotto are both really excited about the lineup for the upcoming FYF Fest so I asked them to highlight some of their favorites – girls vs. boys. We kicked off this two-part post with the ladies, and now we preview the gentleman.
Also, we have a pair of tickets to give away to one lucky winner. Send an email about why YOU should get the tickets to giveaway@kcrw.org with FYF Fest in the subject line and we will notify a winner on Wednesday, Aug 25!
The …

KCRW DJs Marion Hodge and Mario Cotto are both really excited about the lineup for the upcoming FYF Fest so I asked them to highlight some of their favorites – girls vs. boys. This will be a two-part post, but we kick it off with the ladies!
The fest will be held Saturday, September 4 at Los Angeles State Historic Park.
From DJ Marion Hodges:
When I was initially approached to do write a FYF preview from a Girls vs. Boys perspective I was all like “Cool, girl power, and other stuff like …

From DJ Marion Hodges:
If I’d been left to my own devices I would have spent a cozy night at home and missed one of the best shows that I’ve seen all year.
Knowing as I do that Exploding Flowers‘ front man Sharif Dumani’s record collection contains as many items from the Stiff, Creation, and Cherry Red labels as it does Black Flag and Brian Jonestown Masacre albums; I should have been counting down the seconds to a live performance from this band.
Still when the night rolled around, I …

From DJ Marion Hodges:
“I Don’t Like You (Cos You Don’t Like the Pastels)” is one of my favorites songs of the year.  This song from Leeds-based indie pop band This Many Boyfriends (which you can download for free here) is endlessly catchy and just begging to be shouted along to. But even better, it has me thinking a lot about one of my favorite pop song traditions:  The joke song.
A good joke song is a very tricky thing to pull off — it has to strike a perfect balance between …

From KCRW DJ Marion Hodges –
We here at KCRW have a serious case of World Cup Fever.  So much so, that we’ve added this page to the website spotlighting each country competing in this great event. Since we love music even more than we love soccer around these parts, we decided to choose an artist from each of these countries, and direct you to a song of theirs, or a performance they gave here on KCRW. While there are some seriously incredible songs/performances represented here, I’d like to focus specifically …

by KCRW DJ Marion Hodges
This past Tuesday night I had the privilege of introducing Nada Surf for a sold out show at the Troubadour. I liked their sole mainstream hit, “Popular,” when I was in junior high school but, like most Nada Surf fans, I really began to pay close attention when the began releasing records for Seattle-based indie label Barsuk years later. By that time, they had pretty clear cut idea of who exactly they were as a band, and what exactly they were trying to do — …

It happens to the best of us, I suppose. A record comes out at some point during the year, you hear it, you like it… you forget it. For whatever reason, this thing that rightfully should have become an all enveloping presence in your life has instead drifted to the back of your consciousness. Such was the case with me and Mav!s, a new collaboration from British DJ/Producer Ashley Beedle and Darren Morris on the K7! label. What they’ve done here is taken an infatuation with the Burt Bacharach composition …

By KCRW DJ Marion Hodges:
To understand exactly how important Black Tambourine is to the history of pop music – and American pop music especially – you probably had to be deeply into the underground music scene in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s. I was not. I was still very young, and very much enraptured with whichever Andrew Lloyd Webber soundtrack, or top 40 hit my mom was blasting from the speakers of her Ford Aerostar. However, even though it took me well into my ‘20’s to discover the understated brilliance that …