SPILL NEWS: CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH CELEBRATES 20th ANNIVERSARY OF DEBUT ALBUM WITH WORLD TOUR AND UPCOMING REISSUE

CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH CELEBRATES 20th ANNIVERSARY OF DEBUT ALBUM WITH WORLD TOUR AND UPCOMING REISSUE

ORIGINAL 2004 RECORDING OF ALBUM FAVOURITE “HEAVY METAL” IS OUT NOW

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah will celebrate the 20th anniversary of their landmark self-titled debut album with an epic world tour and exclusive new reissue. The first leg of the global headline run gets underway with North American dates beginning March 31, 2025 in Washington, DC, and then performing 20 more shows including a very special homecoming performance set for May 10 at Philadelphia, PA’s Union Transfer.

September will see Clap Your Hands Say Yeah crossing the Atlantic for a series of European dates in Belgium, Ireland, France, and the United Kingdom, including a two-night stand at London’s EartH (September 19-20). The tour then heads Down Under for dates in Australia and New Zealand beginning November 5 at Sydney’s Metro Theatre. Tickets for all dates go on sale Friday, November 22, 2024. Additional dates – including further European shows and visits to Japan, Central and South America  – will be announced soon.

The 20th anniversary of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah will further be commemorated with a special new reissue, arriving on limited-edition vinyl LP early next year on the band’s own label via Secretly Distribution, the defiantly independent home of Alec Ounsworth’s music for over two decades. The celebration officially gets underway with the release of a previously unreleased original 2004 version of fan favourite, “Heavy Metal”, available now. Recorded live at Pawtucket, RI’s Machines with Magnets Studios, the newly remixed and mastered track was recently discovered among the original project files and captures what Clap Your Hands Say Yeah founder and frontman Alec Ounsworth calls “a special moment in time – a young group of guys all piling into one hotel room to wake up and go to a real studio (!) to try to come up with something special just for the fun of it.”

“At the time, ‘Heavy Metal’ was meant to appear alongside a small collection of songs to be used for an EP to be shopped around to labels,” Ounsworth says. “We never thought that an album was possible at the time. Later, during the mixing of the EP, a decision was made to add other songs. This final collection of songs went on to be the first album.

“I guess I didn’t think this original version of ‘Heavy Metal’ sat very well on the album once we started recording some of the later songs (‘The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth’, ‘Is This Love?’, etc.) so I decided the song should be changed even though the original (as a standalone single) had always worked. Now that I listen to the original ‘Heavy Metal’ remixed and mastered, I realize it very well could (should?) have been on the album itself.

“I really like both versions of ‘Heavy Metal’, but 20 years later I think I’ve come to appreciate this one a little more. The rest of the album has this excitement too, of course, but the earliest songs speak even more to a certain innocence around that time which I try hard not to forget.”

Few bands have burst quite so brilliantly onto the scene as Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Fewer still can say their debut defined a scene, a time, and marked a paradigm shift in the music industry. But Clap Your Hands Say Yeah managed all this and more; no wonder the band’s self-titled first album is still considered one of the finest and most influential independent releases of the 2000s.

A heady blend of left field pop and melodic, exuberant indie rock, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah repurposed a number of classic musical references for a new generation of music fans. Fun-loving and quirky, the band – formed around the enigmatic singer/songwriter Alec Ounsworth – achieved that rare alchemy, synthesizing a dizzying array of styles and influences into something wholly their own. And that something was utterly glorious, full of buzzing synths, trebly guitars, bustling drums, and Ounsworth’s lilting, wailing vocals. The record’s raw, ramshackle sound was an integral part of its appeal; time has merely magnified that charm. In “The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth” and “Upon This Tidal Wave Of Young Blood”, Ounsworth wrote two of the most uplifting, celebratory tracks of this millennium, obvious highlights on an album of consistent excellence and one rightly lauded for re-writing the rules of what indie bands could be.

Tour Dates

MARCH
31 – Washington DC – The Atlantis

APRIL
1 – Carrboro, NC – Cat’s Cradle
2 – Atlanta, GA – Terminal West
4 – Ft. Worth, TX – Tulip’s
5 – Austin, TX – Scoot Inn
7 – Phoenix, AZ – Crescent Ballroom
8 – Los Angeles, CA – Regent Theater
9 – San Francisco, CA – Independent
11 – Portland, OR – Aladdin Theater
12 – Seattle, WA – Crocodile Café
13 – Vancouver, BC – Biltmore Cabaret
15 – Salt Lake City, UT – Urban Lounge
16 – Denver, CO – Bluebird

MAY
2 – St. Paul, MN – Amsterdam Bar and Hall
3 – Chicago, IL – Thalia Hall
4 – Grand Rapids, MI – Pyramid Scheme
6 – Toronto, ON – Great Hall
7 – Albany, NY – The Egg
8 – Somerville, MA – Crystal Ballroom
9 – New York, NY – Webster Hall
10 – Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer

SEPTEMBER
14 – Leffinge, BE – Leffingeleuren Festival †
16 – Dublin, IE – Button Factory
18 – Paris, FR – Gaité Lyrique
19 – London, UK – EartH
20 – London, UK – EartH

NOVEMBER
5 – Sydney, AU – Metro Theatre
7 – Melbourne, AU – Northcote Theatre
8 – Brisbane, AU – The Triffid
11 – Auckland, NZ – The Tuning Fork

Artist Links

Background Photo Credit: Matt Barrick

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