Death Cab for Cutie

Indie rock titans and eight-time GRAMMY nominees Death Cab for Cutie – Benjamin Gibbard, Nicholas Harmer, Jason McGerr, Dave Depper, and Zac Rae –  release their 11th studio album. I Built You A Tower, on June 5 via ANTI- Records. The move marks the band’s return to their independent roots after 20 years on Atlantic Records. Produced and engineered by John Congleton and assembled from a mere three weeks of sessions, I Built You A Tower was recorded at Animal Rites in Los Angeles, as well as the band members’ homes in Seattle, Bellingham, Los Angeles, and Portland.

In recent years, Death Cab celebrated several historic milestones, including massive sold-out tours celebrating the 20th anniversaries of seminal releases Transatlanticism (2003) and Plans (2005). Those tours were pivotal to the creation of I Built You A Tower, as behind the scenes, Gibbard weathered the greatest pressure of his professional life — fronting both Death Cab and the Postal Service on arena stages for hours a night — while struggling with the collapse of his personal life in the background. The strain felt too much for one person to bear, and the “tower” originated as a way to protect himself. “There’s this need to find a place in ourselves to put loss and grief,” he explains. “A place that can hold it so we can move on with our lives. But there are these moments where the trauma breaks out of that shell we created for it.”

I Built You A Tower is an album of reconciling with past selves in order to locate a new future. “The anniversary tours exorcised any nostalgia in our systems,” Depper observes. “We felt part of this powerful force greater than all of us and went into the studio with a sense of, how can we capture that feeling and put it into something new?” Harmer continues, “The whole experience of this record got us back to the earliest versions of this band: If the musicians in the room like what we’re working on, that’s enough. We reconnected with the confidence that comes with that.” As such, this is not the dreaded “return to form” narrative, but a reclamation of a core ethos that has run through Death Cab’s 30-year history.

Formed in Bellingham, WA in 1997, Death Cab for Cutie almost immediately entered the ranks of the era's definitive bands, fueled in large part by the remarkable power of co-founder, vocalist, guitarist, and lead songwriter Benjamin Gibbard's complex, often bittersweet songcraft. The band made their worldwide popular breakthrough with 2003's RIAA Platinum-certified Transatlanticism, later named by NPR as one of "The Decade's 50 Most Important Recordings."

Plans, their 2005 Atlantic Records debut release, saw Death Cab for Cutie ascending to even greater heights, earning RIAA platinum certification and a GRAMMY Award nomination for "Best Alternative Album" while spawning the chart-topping singles, "Soul Meets Body" and "I Will Follow You into the Dark," the latter of which was honored with a GRAMMY nod for "Best Pop Performance By Duo Or Group With Vocals." Their following albums — including Narrow Stairs (2008), The Open Door (2009), Codes and Keys (2011), and Kintsugi (2015) — all received various GRAMMY Award nominations, bringing their total career nominations to eight overall.

Death Cab for Cutie's ninth studio album, Thank You for Today, was released in 2018. That album saw the band entering its second decade by both expanding and refining its signature sound, with highlights including lead single, "Gold Rush," which reached #1 on Billboard's "Adult Alternative Songs" chart.

The band continued to affirm their lasting artistic legacy with a wide range of creative activity in the years that followed, including diverse collaborations such as Chance the Rapper's 2019 album track, "Do You Remember (ft. Death Cab for Cutie)," and Tycho & Gibbard's acclaimed 2021 single, "Only Love."

December 2020 saw Death Cab for Cutie release The Georgia EP, initially offered as a 24-hour Bandcamp exclusive in advance of the crucial Georgia runoff elections that ultimately turned the state blue and secured Democratic control of the US Senate. The five-song project — which features covers of iconic artists from the great state of Georgia — raised over $100K for Fair Fight Action, the national voting rights organization founded by Stacy Abrams.

Death Cab for Cutie's 10th studio album, Asphalt Meadows, was released in 2022 via Atlantic Records.