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# 25 years of KEXP Annual Listeners' Favorite lists
- URL: https://digmeoutliers.com/25-years-of-kexp-annual-listeners-favorite-lists/
- Published: 2026-10-18T07:30:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T16:27:37.000Z
- Author: John
- Tags: Heavy, Annual Lists, Data Project

In 25 years of [KEXP](https://www.kexp.org/?ref=digmeoutliers.com)'s listener-voted annual "Listeners' Favorite Albums of the Year" lists, exactly three artists have landed a total of ten or more releases across the two-and-a-half-decade time span: King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Wilco, and The Decemberists. Not ten, not five — three, total, in a quarter-century, out of every artist who's ever made a list.

That number is what got me looking at the full 25-year span in one place instead of one list at a time. So I pulled every entry from every KEXP Annual list, 2001 through 2025, and built the thing below: one wheel, one spoke per year, every artist who ever made the cut.

Putting it all together, a few things stand out. Most artists appear once, and almost no one reaches ten. About a third of every year's list is a name that has never been on one before, and the artists who do come back tend to take a break first. Which says something about what a listener-voted list actually rewards over 25 years: less a fixed canon of favorites, more a constantly refreshing roster of beloved artists.

Next up: who is actually on those lists? [Who's on the list?](https://digmeoutliers.com/whos-on-the-list/) looks at bands versus solo artists, and at how the mix of solo women and solo men has changed over 25 years.