Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

"Over and Over Again (Lost & Found)"
from the album Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
2005

Download a free MP3 of "Over and Over again (Lost & Found)"
from the band's website [right-click/save-as]

Who needs a major label? Or an indie label, for that matter? Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's debut is on a collision course with the big time without either. Why? Because all the cool kids (and the patron saint of experimental rock) are talking.

Ever since Pitchfork, the arbiter of online indie music cool, gave it a rave, it's been flying off the shelves at such indie stores as Atlanta's hip Little Five Points music emporium Criminal Records. Now the big guys are starting to paying attention.

The first pressing of 2,000 copies was gone a couple of weeks ago. A second run of 5,000 is dwindling, and the band has ordered more.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

That might seem like small potatoes compared with the multimillions moved by the biggest artists on major labels, but consider the numbers in Atlanta, about 900 miles from the band's base in Brooklyn, and where it has never played: "We've sold [more than] 60, with more every day," says Criminal Records' Eric Levin, adding that he just ordered 60 more last week. "We are the only store in Atlanta with it, so that helps."

It also helps that it's good.

The band sounds something like cuddlesome Scottish combo Belle and Sebastian in a tightly contested pillow fight with early Talking Heads over the last Velvet Underground album in the rack. It's a sound that seems fully formed, despite the fact that CYHSY frontman Alec Ounsworth's passionate delivery, cracked in all the right places, is the band's trump card. You'll either love it or hate it, but you won't be able to ignore it.

Band members, which are mailing out the discs themselves, are getting a quick lesson on the power of the Internet. "I'm becoming slowly more familiar with the inner workings of the World Wide Web," says the Philadelphia-based Ounsworth with a chuckle. "Apparently, people use their computers. So, I guess that's it."

"Right now, Pitchfork has an incredibly active and responsive readership," explains Criminal's Levin. "There really isn't another Web site with that much influence."

Enough influence that David Bowie popped into a recent CYHSY gig. And that major label reps have started sniffing around like hound dogs. Ounsworth estimates that 20 to 30 companies have expressed an interest since the band began more than a year ago, but he's not going to jump into anything.

"If I can afford to be indecisive I will be," Ounsworth says, laughing. "I think it might be wise to consider something a little before our tour in September, simply because it would be nice to know that somebody else is taking care of it while were out playing."

~ Shane Harrison, Atlanta Journal-Constitution