Some videos of Kaki King

I’m not big on showy playing, but I definitely like watching guitarists who are much better than me to get a sense of what’s possible if I practice. A few months ago, when I was first taking up guitar, a friend mentioned Kaki King as someone to listen to if I was looking for interesting playing styles.

This first video gives you a sense of her playing, which uses a lot of harmonics, slapping, and fretboard tapping.

I don’t enjoy her songs that verge on ambient house nearly as much. I find it cheesy, though the playing is still amazing.

For shows, she sometimes uses a loop station to trade off between guitar and drums to build up songs with melodic vocal melodies. Her vocals are nicely unaffected yet skillful. She played on a Tegan and Sara album, and you can definitely hear a similarity between her and T+G in terms of vocals.

This next one is part of a series on King recording her latest album. You get to see some of the process, including writing lyrics and dancing around the studio.

And here’s a new video for the song “Pull me out alive”, which I just realized was directed and produced by some friends of my parents. This is a description of how the video was made, from Kaki King’s youtube profile.

The video was made without film cameras — it consists of over 5,000 still photographs shot on Nikon D30s. There are no special effects; all of the light trails were created by hand, with up to eight individual “light animators” flashing LEDs and flashlights on and off over a long (8 second) shot exposure. The video was shot in NYC over five very cold, 16 hour days in January. Special thanks to Eddie & Doug at Chop Wood Carry Water, the talented crew, all the actors & extras, Rockwood Music Hall, Jamie Proctor, YouTube and especially all Kaki’s fans who came to NYC from as far away as Virginia.

Her new album “Dreaming of Revenge” came out on March 11th. Listen to more music and order copies on her myspace page.