one of indie rock's greatest and most critically acclaimed success stories, death cab for cutie formed as a solo project by western washington university engineering student ben gibbard in 1997.  soon after releasing an eight song e.p. titled you can play these songs with chords, he recruited his producer chris walla to play guitars, his roommate nick harmer to play bass, and nathan good now an ex-member, to play drums.  next thing they knew, dcfc were signed to the great seattle label, barsuk records releasing their debut l.p., something about airplanes in 1998.

death cab for cutie took their name from a song the band "bonzo dog doo-da" sang in the beatles' film, magical mystery tour.  the song, coincidentally was titled "death cab for cutie".

thier seventh album, narrow stairs, a much darker collection of songs than previous work, was released by atlantic records, may 13, 2008.  one week after release, the album hit number 1 on the billboard 200, dcfc's first album to do so.  because this arena filling, grammy® nominated band is on a major label, has a number 1 album, and has sold nearly 300,000 units of their current album, i don't think they can be considered indie anymore.  they are however, an important band: they introduced their independent music styling to millions of fans and influenced countless other bands.

there are a ton of live performances available online for your listening pleasure.  click here (2008), here (2005), and/or here (2003) for in-studio performances on kcrw's morning becomes eclectic. for more dcfc, click here for a full gig recorded at the 9:30 club by npr's all songs considered on october 24, 2005.  but wait, there's more: here is a may 10, 2007 solo show by ben gibbard. and finally: click here for a june 2, 2008 in-studio performance, recorded by minnesota public radio.

dcfc is touring in support of narrow stairs.  click here to find out if dcfc is coming near you.

as always, please buy this album from your local independent music store and not from retailers like wal-mart (soulless, globally-homogenizing, community-killers) or i-tunes (albums should be listened to as an entire composition with album cover and liner notes in hand).  incidentally, these two companies sell more music than any other retailer in the united states.  that my friend, bites.