Bilal, Son Little and Kate Faust will play WXPN’s Red Bull SoundSelect show on 8/20

WXPN and The Key are very excited to be curating the August edition of Red Bull’s SoundSelect show at Underground Arts, and we’re doubly psyched about the lineup we put together. Philly soul innovator Bilal joins futuristic singer-songwriter Son Little and electropop maven Kate Faust at the August 20th event. The bill is all-Philly, all-awesome and tickets are only $3 – you can RSVP here.

Bilal emerged from the early-aughts neo-soul scene with the remarkable debut 1st Born Second in 2001. In the 14 years since, he’s released a solid half-dozen LPs and mixtapes, most notably 2013’s  A Love Surreal and this year’s In Another Life. The current album was recorded with producer Adrian Younge and features a driving, boundary-pushing sound (the way the smooth “Satellite” dovetails into the frenzied, urgent “Lunatic” is badass) as well as collabs with Kimbra and Kendrick Lamar.

Son Little has been a favorite of the XPN crowd since dropping his hit “The River” last year. Offstage, he goes by Aaron Livingston, and he’s been a longtime local collaborator, cutting his teeth as a guitarist with The Roots and going on to collaborate with local electronic favorite RJD2 on the Icebird project. As Son Little, Livingston synthesizes all his musical interests under one umbrella – simmering sexy soul, raw blues, dreamy psych and mellowed-out dub, with a vibey electronic undercurrent. The sum of it all is massively dope music – the Things I Forgot EP came out back in November, with a full-length on the way this fall via Anti- Records.

We’ve been following the career of Kate Faust over several incarnations – beginning with her whimsical, central PA folk outfit Perkasie to her gospel-tinged vocals in Toy Soldiers, to her jazzy pop outfit Lady. As a solo artist, Faust dives deep into sensual electronica, and after introducing this direction in her 2013 debut Crucial Companion, her latest EP, Eros, brings the heat in a big way.

The concert takes place Thursday, August 20th at Underground Arts; tickets are $3 with RSVP, $10 at the door – but we recommend the RSVP route, which you can do here.

Poster design by Tyler Spangler