Clap Your Hands Say Yeah Discuss Album, Tour

Pitchfork spoke to band leader Alec Ounsworth about the band itself, prospective labels, tour plans, those influences everyone keeps talking about, and, of course, that crazy name. "We needed a name before our first show," Ounsworth says. "We were coming back from our practice space and we passed a graffiti sign where somebody had written that. And we just took it, becuase we needed a name fast."

Recorded primarily in summer 2004, CYHSY (not to be confused with CSNY) pieced their album together slowly as the band found the money and the studio time to get it finished. Friends from college in Connecticut who have all been in other bands, the members of CYHSY (Ounsworth, Lee Sargent, Robbie Guertin, Tyler Sargent, and Sean Greenhalgh) played their first show a little over a year go in New York. Since then, they've played almost exclusively in New York, because that is where everyone lives and works-- except Ounsworth. "I'm from Philadelphia," he adds. "Everyone keeps saying we all live in New York, which I'm getting a little tired of, frankly. Friends are nice enough to let me stay on couches up there!"

As for labels, Ounsworth couldn't say exactly who the band have been speaking with, but insisted it's still all preliminary. "It's mostly that they say they're coming to our show, and they just want to see how things are working out."

Almost every piece written on the band so far (Pitchfork included) has been throwing out influences left and right: Talking Heads, Neutral Milk Hotel, Modest Mouse, Wilco, Yo La Tengo, My Bloody Valentine, etc. Ounsworth says he isn't too familiar with most of these bands, saying, with a laugh, "I've heard the Talking Heads before. That's that band from the 80s, right?"

Ounsworth says his own personal influences lately have been Van Morrison, Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys, the Heavenly Gospel Singers, Neil Young, Tom Waits, and Bob Dylan. "I've been listening to them all a lot lately and they've seeped in for sure. These aren't just my personal influences lately but have always been. Dylan is one of the few people I go out of my way to see live these days. I saw Jonathan Richman a little while ago, too."

So you've heard the album, but what about a tour? CYHSY currently have one show scheduled in New York this summer, July 20 at Southpaw. In September they will play throughout the U.S. opening for the National. Details of that have yet to be finalized.

* Clap Your Hands Say Yeah: <a