Chinese American Bear on Their Love of Breakbeats and Melody’s Echo Chamber
In Our Headphones
KEXP
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 7 May 2026
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week Larry Mizell Jr. fills in for host Evie Stokes to talk with Seattle band Chinese American Bear. The duo bonds with Larry about their mutual love of breakbeats with shoegaze guitars. All perfectly embodied in their song choice this week, Melody’s Echo Chamber’s song with El Michels Affair, “Daisy,” from her 2025 album Unclouded – out now on Domino Records.
Produced by Dusty Henry
Mastered by: William Myers
Production support: Serafima Healy
Listen to the full songs on KEXP's "In Our Headphones" playlist on Spotify or the “What's In Our Headphones” playlist on YouTube.
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Photo Credit: Diane Sagnier
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is in our headphones. I'm Larry Myzel Jr. I'm in for Evie Stokes today and I'm joined by Bryson Anne of Chinese American Bear. |
| 0:08.1 | And you guys brought in another song for us today. This time it's a song from Melody's Echo Chamber, who I love, featuring El Michael's Affair, who are awesome. Tell me about this song, Daisy. |
| 0:19.4 | Yeah, uh, Daisy's from her most recent album from last year. |
| 0:23.3 | So good. |
| 0:23.9 | So good. |
| 0:25.7 | Yeah, it has a lot of characteristics, I feel like, from previous albums, but also feels like |
| 0:31.3 | its own kind of album. |
| 0:34.2 | Yeah, I think what drew me to the song was, was, uh, it's, it's pretty simple. |
| 0:39.0 | Yeah. |
| 0:40.3 | The, like the break beats across this whole album are just like, so sick, you know. |
| 0:45.7 | Absolutely. |
| 0:46.5 | Um, and in the song in particular, I feel like, I don't know, they just shine to me, like the drums and the production's amazing. |
| 0:53.3 | The song sounds like it's sped up. |
| 0:55.5 | I'm like really kind of into very speed, you know, and how they used to speed tape up a lot. |
| 1:00.5 | Yeah. And trying to catch when bands do that. Yeah. And because it's like pretty obvious with |
| 1:06.5 | older recordings, but now it feels a little harder to catch because I think, I don't know, |
| 1:10.2 | just maybe the digital tools that people are using or something, but it totally sounds a little sped up to me, which I really like, and we do that a lot in our music, just kind of speed up and speed down. Oh, I love that. Yeah, everything's kind of all over the place. It makes playing live difficult because it's always been the wrong key. |
| 1:28.6 | Yeah, right, right, right. |
| 1:30.8 | And we're speeding it up, slowing down, yeah. |
| 1:32.9 | Yeah, but I love the, yeah. |
| 1:36.1 | Her voice quality is like a little bit mousy in it, which I really like. And, yeah, the lyrics are kind of hard to hear because of her vocal quality, which I like. |
| 1:43.3 | It just, you kind of are more just fibing with it rather than trying to, you know, hear what she's saying. |
... |
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