I'm very familiar with Clojure, but even I can't make a good argument that:

    (tc/select-rows ds #(> (% "year") 2008))

is more, or at least as, intuitive as:

    filter(ds, year > 2008)

as cited above. I think there's a good argument to be made that Clojure's data processing abilities, particularly around immutable data, make a compelling case in spite of the syntax. The REPL is great too, and the JVM is fast. But I still to this day imagine infix comparisons in my head and then mentally move the comparator to the front of the list to make sure I get it right.

I am really not in data science, and I have decent Clojure experience. Is there a reason anyone would pick Clojure over something like K? From what I understand, those array languages are really good for writing safe but efficient code on rectangular data.

How about this?

    (filter ds (> year 2008))

That's a trivial Clojure macro to make work if it's what you find "intuitive."