Death Cab For Cutie

An indie rock band formed in Bellingham, Washington, in 1997, Death Cab for Cutie is led by multi-instrumentalist and principal composer Ben Gibbard. A student sound engineer at the University of Washington, Gibbard was the original member of power pop band Pinwheel, which fell by the wayside when he began work on a solo album, meeting producer Chris Walla in the process. For the tour that followed the release of their 1997 cassette You Can Play This Songs with Chords, they recruited musicians Nick Harmer (bass) and Nathan Good (drums). Named Death Cab for Cutie after a song by the parody band The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, the group signed with independent label Barsuk Records and recorded a series of four albums, from Something About Airplanes (1998) to the critically acclaimed Transatlanticism (2003), before achieving international success with Plans (#4 on the Billboard 200 in 2005), their first release for Atlantic Records. With drummer Jason McGerr on board since 2003, the quartet's sixth album Narrow Stairs (2008) reached the top of the US charts. While the band's popularity is underpinned by "Soul Meets Body" (#60 on the Billboard Hot 100) and "I Will Possess Your Heart" (#70), and three Grammy Award nominations, subsequent albums Codes and Keys (#3 in 2011) and Kintsugi (#8 in 2015) manage to maintain public interest. Released in 2014, the Live 2012 album documents a tour with the Magic Malik Orchestra, the flautist's namesake band. The departure of Chris Walla, replaced in 2016 by Dave Depper (guitar) and Zac Rae (keyboards), preceded the recording of Thank You for Today (No. 18 in 2018), a second album made with an outside producer in the person of Rich Costey. After the release of The Blue EP in 2019 and The Georgia EP in 2020, the band returns in September 2022 with the album Asphalt Meadows, followed by an acoustic version in spring 2023. Ben Gibbard devotes himself to his other band, The Postal Service, before rejoining Death Cab for Cutie to record their eleventh studio album, I Built You a Tower, produced like the previous one by John Congleton. The band's first album for the Anti- label was released in June 2026.

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