25 years of KEXP Annual Listeners' Favorite lists

In 25 years of KEXP'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? looks at bands versus solo artists, and at how the mix of solo women and solo men has changed over 25 years.