Clap Your Hands Say Yeah Launch Second Pressing of Debut CD, Gear Up for Fall Tour with the National

The band is still without a label, though lucky for them, they've been receiving help with distribution from Insound. The initial pressing of 2,000 copies sold out about two weeks ago, leaving the band without any CDs to provide to their clamoring newfound fanbase. Fortunately, a second run of 5,000 discs came in yesterday, and is now being shipped-- by the band themselves-- to mom-and-pops' cross-country.

Bandleader Alec Ounsworth spoke to us by telephone earlier this afternoon, saying, "Today I know that one of my responsibilities is to send some [CDs] to Amoeba Records in Los Angeles, and I wanted to send them around to people in Philly that I know. We're just going through Insound right now and not doing it direct anymore, simply because I was handling that stuff from here in Philly and eventually it picked up to the extent where it wasn't humanly possible to get all the orders out ourselves." Prior to hooking up with Insound, CYHSY sold nearly 500 themselves direct through their website. "For me," Ounsworth says, "I'd feel bad if somebody ordered it on a particular day and I just couldn't do it that day. If I'm trying to write songs and things like that I can't spend all my time distributing."

Both major and indie labels alike have expressed interest in signing the band over the course of the past few weeks, but the band hasn't made any decisions as of yet. Says Ounsworth, "We've been letting our manager talk to some of these guys. Essentially the idea is we want to let this thing run as an independent thing as long as we can. The thing for me is we have to have total control. I don't want to have to do some single for some label."

Of course, the band seems to be much more interested in the independent route, but assuming that, say, Interscope came knocking and promised complete creative control, it's not a foregone conclusion that signing to a major is out of the question: "To me it doesn't matter so much. A label is a label just as a show is a show, and if they have a particularly good deal-- and I don't believe the label is necessarily the devil-- as long as they work with the band in the sense that they can try to do things honestly, that's the only way I'd ever work with a major label. I've got nothing to lose."

As a result of the press, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah have received a swell of email in the past few weeks. While most of it has been positive, Ounsworth says there have certainly been some mean-spirited ones as well: "One guy wrote in saying, 'You guys are fucking awful.'" Another listener who read Pitchfork's brief interview with the band posted in our June 24th news story took issue with Ounsworth's insinuation that he wasn't familiar with many of the bands his group is being compared to. "Obviously I'm not going to go on and on and say that I love the Talking Heads. I know all their fucking albums but I don't need to say that. This guy went on saying that I'm full of shit because [my influences] obviously don't come from [the bands Pitchfork cited]. That's the point-- the idea is that if you're writing a song, you don't sit down and write Lou Reed's Berlin. It's all really just funny to me."

Speaking of Lou Reed, another 70s glam-rock icon, David Bowie, attended a recent CYHSY show. The rest of the band tried to keep it from Ounsworth, who knew that Bowie had requested a copy of the album a few days before the gig, but a mysterious name on the guest list that night-- one "Coco Schwab"-- tipped him off that the rock legend might be in attendance. Unfortuantely, he didn't have a chance to meet the rock legend: "I was a little late off stage because we were unloading," Ounsworth said. "I think he split right as we finished."

The plan for the next few months is to play a couple of shows sporadically on the East Coast, until finally embarking on a North American tour opening for the National, which kicks off at Brooklyn's Warsaw venue. For now, the next show scheduled happens at Southpaw a week from today, and will be followed by gigs at Mercury Lounge, the Seaport Music Festival, and the First Unitarian Church in Philadephia, PA. Presently only a handful of dates are confirmed for Clap Your Hands' tour with the National. Naturally, we'll report the rest when we get 'em.

07-20 Brooklyn, NY - Southpaw
07-27 New York, NY - Mercury Lounge
08-10 New York, NY - Seaport Music Festival
08-17 Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church
09-07 Brooklyn, NY - Warsaw +
09-08 Northampton, MA - Iron Horse +
09-09 New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom +
09-10 Philadelphia, PA - The Khyber +
09-16 Cambridge, MA - TT the Bear's +
09-18 Toronto, Ontario - Horseshoe Tavern +
09-23 Chicago, IL - Schuba's +
09-24 Minneapolia, MN - 400 Bar +
09-26 Denver, CO - Hi-Dive +
09-30 Portland, OR - Dante's +
10-01 Seattle, WA - Neumo's (KEXP Benefist Show) +
10-02 Vancouver, British Columbia - Media Club +
10-05 San Francisco, CA - Mezzanine +
10-06 Los Angeles, CA - Troubador +

+ indicates dates with The National

* Clap Your Hands Say Yeah: <a