Stream the new Clap Your Hands Say Yeah album, Only Run

Photo courtesy of the artist
Alec Ounsworth and his band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are back with a new album, Only Run, out on June 3rd.

Stephen Thompson, writing about the album at NPR Music says:

Ironically, the factors that made Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s mid-’00s success seem fleeting — its indifference to the label system, its embrace of the Internet — helped inoculate the group against obsolescence. Rather than get dropped by a label at the first sign of waning public interest, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah took a break and then course-corrected: Singer released an eclectic solo debut (Mo Beauty) in 2009, other members stretched out via intriguing side projects, and the band returned in 2011 with a terrific third album, Hysterical.

Past reference points like still apply, but the new Only Run expands on Hysterical’s simultaneously soaring, jittery and joyful sound in surprising ways. Melancholy electronics seep through some of the new record’s best moments — in “Blameless” and “Beyond Illusion,” Ounsworth is backed by arrangements that recall mid-period — while prominent guests include Kid Koala (“Cover Up”) and, in “Coming Down,” ‘s Matt Berninger. For every briskly grabby, right-up-the-middle rush the band concocts, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah also finds a new way to deepen and vary its approach, in ways that reflect a relentless pursuit of invention and reinvention.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah play at Johnny Brenda’s on June 27th. Go here for tickets and more information.

Listen to the album in its entirety here.