Andres Santo Domingo and Tom Clapp with Kemado Records

Founded in 2002 by Andrés Santo Domingo and Tom Clapp, Kemado Records is one of the few outlets that still supports vinyl, along with it's sister label Mexican Summer. Kemado Records is based out of New York City and is primarily centered around heavy rock and roll.

Andres Santo Domingo and Keith Abrahamsson in the Mexican Summer store

"Vinyl is definitely growing, and will continue to grow. But I think there's a ceiling," Andres Santo Domingo, the co-founder of the label, told NPR. "I don't think it'll ever become the prevalent format. I think it'd be crazy to think that."

Kemado Records and Mexican Summer are both serious lovers of vinyl, and when they opened their new office in Greenpoint, Brooklyn they looked for a place that could include both a commercial recording studio and a first-floor retail store where they could sell limited-edition vinyl.  In fact, the label recently opened Co-Op 87 with several other record labels.


"It’s a vinyl co-op store essentially," explained Andres Santo Domingo. "It’s a platform for Mexican Summer and for our belief in limited-edition vinyl -- a resurgence that is going on right now."

In fact, the record label hopes that eventually the label will be able to take as little as ten days from a recording performance to having a ready-to-sell vinyl available in the store.  

As Keith Abrahamson, Andres Santo Domingo's partner at Mexican Summer, explains, having this level of production has helped the label figure out how successful releases are going to be- a big improvement on how business used to be done.

"Operating this way has allowed us to kind of create a much more realistic way to develop artists," Abrahamsson says. "You kind of jump off a cliff the way business used to be done. You just take that risk and see how it works out. Doing a limited press and digital release, you can start to get a gauge on if a release has legs. For instance, the Washed Out record we did, we pressed 1,000 of those and put it out digitally. And we've repressed that like four times now and eventually put it out on CD."

Kemado records has released music by The Sword, Best Coast, Danava, and Elefant.