YAGODY have arrived on one of the most respected stages in independent radio. The Ukrainian folk collective, founded in Lviv in 2016 by Zoriana Dybovska alongside fellow theater students, recorded a full six-song live session at KEXP in Seattle.
This is not background music. YAGODY’s sound draws from deep regional Ukrainian folk traditions, gathered across the country through years of active field research. That source material, songs about love, life, and memory, gets filtered through a lineup of voices, accordion, drums, percussion, Tibetan bowl, and the drymba, a Hutsul mouth harp from the Carpathians. The result is something genuinely singular.
The KEXP session covers six tracks: “Skopaiu Ya Hryadochku,” “Divonko,” “Kalyna-Malyna,” “Tsunamia,” “BramaYA,” and “Chornomorets.” The performances crackle with ritual energy and choral depth, voices layered and alive in a way that demands your full attention.
Dybovska has said each moment in a person’s life has its own song. That philosophy is audible here. YAGODY treat a concert as a performance in one act, built on dramaturgical principles rooted in their theater backgrounds. The KEXP session captures that approach in full.
The group released their debut album in 2020 and have performed at notable events including the medieval festival “Tu Stan!” in Lviv and Lodžie Worldfest in Jičín, Czech Republic.