Pitchfork

Hard to believe it's been over a year now since Sleater-Kinney played their final show (repeat after me: "It's just an indefinite hiatus. It's just an indefinite hiatus."). And indefinite hiatus though it may be, the vacationing members of the iconic trio have found plenty to fill the space between their ("Temporary! Temporary!") break-up and their (fingers-crossed!) barnstorming reunion tour.

Singer/guitarist Carrie Brownstein in particular has been on a roll, having recently reprised her comedic dabblings with "Saturday Night Live" funny guy Fred Armisen. Brownstein, as you may recall, played host Cindy Overton on something called "Boink!", which surfaced on YouTube about a year ago. In the clip, she interviewed former Iraq dictator/Brit-accented rocker Saddam Hussein (played by a quite hilarious Armisen).

Now Brownstein and Armisen have a new bag called "ThunderAnt". Stereogum.com has the first episode, which features a slick stop-motion animated intro soundtracked by a Brownstein/Armisen ditty, and a routine in which the two say "This is nice" at each other a whole lot. Future installments of "ThunderAnt" are expected soon.

Carrie's also a writer, and will read some of her work and discuss music and culture at an upcoming event at NYC university The New School. The talk/reading, moderated by preeminent rock scribe and New School faculty member Greil Marcus, goes down October 10 and is presented by the school's Writing Program. Thanks to Matthew Perpetua for the tip.

Comedy and writing sure don't pay the bills, however, so for that it seems Carrie has turned to advertising. Reader Karissa Sutton points us to the website of prominent Portland ad agency Wieden+Kennedy, which lists Brownstein as one of the overseers of the company's "12" school for young aspiring advertisers. W+K, among other successes, created the Nike slogan "Just Do It" (and "Bo Knows"!!)-- indeed, they're very same Nike-affiliated company that once employed Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss, who called W+K an "evil advertising empire" in a Hot Rock-era interview with Vancouver wacko Nardwuar. Irony, some would say.

Brownstein's formernot current Sleater-Kinney bandmates, meanwhile, have been making some rumblings of their own. Weiss is now an official member of Stephen Malkmus' Jicks, and she's been touring as part of Bright Eyes' band. Corin Tucker, meanwhile, lent some backing vocals to one of Eddie Vedder's contributions to the Into the Wild soundtrack (Forkcast, yo!).