Here's the article, so you don't have to register for the NY Times.
When the boom camera swooped in for a look during a rehearsal earlier this month for "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," Alec Ounsworth first ignored it as he sang plaintively against a wash of strummed guitars, performing "In This Home on Ice," and then kept one lazy eye on it, more out of suspicion than interest.
He holds success in the same regard. Mr. Ounsworth, 28, the lead singer and chief theorist behind Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, knows that good things, important things, are happening for him and his band. But like many young men who have spent thousands of hours in their basement-bedroom-loft fighting a lone battle to come up with words and songs, he is a little surprised that others have taken an interest.
And he worries about what that will mean. Mr. Ounsworth worries about a lot of stuff. He is not so much dark as complicated, the unhip hipster who has little interest in contemporary reference but finds his band's music to be suddenly of the moment.
"There are so many decisions to be made," he said over coffee in the West Village. "It sort of crept up on us."
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, which will play a sold-out show at Irving Plaza on New Year's Eve, sort of crept up on everyone. Its record, hung with the same so-ungainly-it's-sweet name, started picking up Web-born crackle, and pretty soon the band, which has no label, found itself shipping records hand over fist, about 50,000 so far. The same hands that jangled the guitars, rattled the drums and tinkled the toy piano are the ones that boxed and shipped all the records. That's serious D.I.Y. credibility in indie rock circles, and it also means that the band has arrived owing nothing to anyone. The band now has a distributor, a manager and a press guy, but its members say they will not be doing any multipage fashion spreads in Rolling Stone anytime soon.
"We are trying to maintain a level of purity and integrity," Mr. Ounsworth said, seeming self-aware enough to know that between the grungy maroon stocking cap and rockist rhetoric, he flirts with being a cartoon. "We are in a business that requires and demands compromise, but it will still always be a matter of asking. No one can drag you onto national TV."
Yet there they were the next day, sitting in the green room of the "Conan" show, waiting for a rehearsal. The twin Sargent brothers - Lee, guitar and keyboard, and Tyler, bass - were checking out the sandwich wraps, while Robbie Guertin, the keyboardist, and Sean Greenhalgh, the drummer, chatted about the weirdness of playing on television. They are vague about how they came together, except to say they are friends who remain so. Given all their indie cred, the band is supposed to be above it all, but Mr. Greenhalgh admitted that the television gig sounded like fun to him.
"I'm excited to be here," he said. "This is a show I've always watched, and now here we are."
They arrive at this moment as friends, all in their 20's, having formed as a band just last year. Mr. Ounsworth, who lives in Philadelphia, is sitting on a huge pile of songs and was in New York trying to finish a record that he decided should be a separate project. He hopes to get his bandmates - all of whom live in Brooklyn - back in the studio in the spring.
Clap Your Hands is not exactly a crack touring outfit, not yet, anyway, having played the occasional gig in New York to increasingly adoring crowds, but they are newly back from a monthlong trip in Europe and will be hitting the road this spring in the United States.
Everywhere they go, they land on a bed of roses, with critics offering full-throated raves that compare the band to Radiohead and the Talking Heads, among others.
There is miniature majesty to their music - sounds and motifs come and go on the record, seemingly of their own accord. But just when you think Clap Your Hands is a domestic version of Belle and Sebastian, the British kings of twee-core, they rear up and make a big, scary noise. Pitchfork did a good job of describing the music: "Clap Your Hands traffics in melodic, exuberant indie rock that pairs the shimmering, wafting feel of Yo La Tengo with a singular vocal presence that sounds like Paul Banks attempting to yodel through Jeff Mangum's throat. Or imagine the Arcade Fire if their music were more fun-loving and less grave."
Mr. Ounsworth's vocals are a thing of strangled, urgent beauty, replete with head waggle to better squeeze out the sound. But if his singing brings to mind Thom Yorke or David Byrne, he looks to others for tutorials in how to have a career and a life at the same time.
"Wire, Joy Division, the Sex Pistols, they got started because they had something indescribable to say, not because they wanted to be famous," Mr. Ounsworth said.
Nick Stern, who has a day job as a record company executive at Atlantic, manages the band, as much as anyone can.
"They have managed to put themselves in a position where other people really can't influence their decisions," he said. "Most bands dream of getting signed. You get in a band, you get signed and then you get famous. That is not how they think about it."
The Web's ability to taste-make in musical matters means that the traditional bloody crawl through a major label is one way of achieving success, but just one way. Much in the fashion of Arcade Fire, the multi-instrumental combo from Montreal that sets hearts to fluttering wherever it goes, Clap Your Hands is a band that found its way into the hands of fans almost on its own.
Mr. Ounsworth does not read music magazines or Web-surf much - he spends a lot of time taking long walks with his dog in what he calls "the urban forest" of Philadelphia - so he said he had no clue about how the band was doing in relation to other outfits or the music business as a whole.
"I don't really understand the business or the sense of competitiveness," he said. "It's like when Hemingway talked about doing better than Flaubert. How do you say, 'Well, I beat Flaubert'?"
Not that he wants to go back to his last job, which was renovating houses in Philadelphia. He likes making records. "There is a certain kind of narcissistic excitement to going back to a record and realizing that we made that," he said. "No matter what else happens or doesn't happen, we made a record with songs that other people were interested in."
Measuring authorial intent in Mr. Ounsworth's songs is a dicey matter - he prizes and utilizes opacity - but "Over and Over Again (Lost and Found)," a song that name-checks David Bowie to hilarious effect, seems to veer toward a commentary on the rock-star life that Mr. Ounsworth is trying to dodge:
Success is so forbidding
But it makes me think I'm winning
Quiet
Dim the lights
Adopt another lifestyle
One of the surest routes to indie stardom is a turn on "The OC," the teenage soap that uses bands like Modest Mouse and the Subways to provide a soundtrack to all the ambient, youthful angst. Clap Your Hands said, "No thanks."
"There is this keen sensitivity to giving in to 'the man' with Clap Your Hands," said Jonah Weiner, an associate editor of Blender, the monthly music magazine. "Given how many indie bands have embraced the attention that they are finally getting, it almost feels anachronistic, and of course, that only adds to the attraction for a lot of the people that listen to them."
Mr. Ounsworth toys with the conveyor belt of fame even as he avoids it. In an interview not long ago, he said he was looking forward to the perks of stardom, including having someone to go to the bathroom for him. He clearly thinks a lot of the hype and journalism that have followed the band is very much beside the point.
"We are living in a time when the world has become so small and communication has become so prevalent, so that if somebody wants to find you, they will," he said. "We just don't want to deal with a lot of the imagined obligations that go with playing our music."
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Here's the article, so you don't have to register for the NY Times.
When the boom camera swooped in for a look during a rehearsal earlier this month for "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," Alec Ounsworth first ignored it as he sang plaintively against a wash of strummed guitars, performing "In This Home on Ice," and then kept one lazy eye on it, more out of suspicion than interest.
He holds success in the same regard. Mr. Ounsworth, 28, the lead singer and chief theorist behind Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, knows that good things, important things, are happening for him and his band. But like many young men who have spent thousands of hours in their basement-bedroom-loft fighting a lone battle to come up with words and songs, he is a little surprised that others have taken an interest.
And he worries about what that will mean. Mr. Ounsworth worries about a lot of stuff. He is not so much dark as complicated, the unhip hipster who has little interest in contemporary reference but finds his band's music to be suddenly of the moment.
"There are so many decisions to be made," he said over coffee in the West Village. "It sort of crept up on us."
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, which will play a sold-out show at Irving Plaza on New Year's Eve, sort of crept up on everyone. Its record, hung with the same so-ungainly-it's-sweet name, started picking up Web-born crackle, and pretty soon the band, which has no label, found itself shipping records hand over fist, about 50,000 so far. The same hands that jangled the guitars, rattled the drums and tinkled the toy piano are the ones that boxed and shipped all the records. That's serious D.I.Y. credibility in indie rock circles, and it also means that the band has arrived owing nothing to anyone. The band now has a distributor, a manager and a press guy, but its members say they will not be doing any multipage fashion spreads in Rolling Stone anytime soon.
"We are trying to maintain a level of purity and integrity," Mr. Ounsworth said, seeming self-aware enough to know that between the grungy maroon stocking cap and rockist rhetoric, he flirts with being a cartoon. "We are in a business that requires and demands compromise, but it will still always be a matter of asking. No one can drag you onto national TV."
Yet there they were the next day, sitting in the green room of the "Conan" show, waiting for a rehearsal. The twin Sargent brothers - Lee, guitar and keyboard, and Tyler, bass - were checking out the sandwich wraps, while Robbie Guertin, the keyboardist, and Sean Greenhalgh, the drummer, chatted about the weirdness of playing on television. They are vague about how they came together, except to say they are friends who remain so. Given all their indie cred, the band is supposed to be above it all, but Mr. Greenhalgh admitted that the television gig sounded like fun to him.
"I'm excited to be here," he said. "This is a show I've always watched, and now here we are."
They arrive at this moment as friends, all in their 20's, having formed as a band just last year. Mr. Ounsworth, who lives in Philadelphia, is sitting on a huge pile of songs and was in New York trying to finish a record that he decided should be a separate project. He hopes to get his bandmates - all of whom live in Brooklyn - back in the studio in the spring.
Clap Your Hands is not exactly a crack touring outfit, not yet, anyway, having played the occasional gig in New York to increasingly adoring crowds, but they are newly back from a monthlong trip in Europe and will be hitting the road this spring in the United States.
Everywhere they go, they land on a bed of roses, with critics offering full-throated raves that compare the band to Radiohead and the Talking Heads, among others.
There is miniature majesty to their music - sounds and motifs come and go on the record, seemingly of their own accord. But just when you think Clap Your Hands is a domestic version of Belle and Sebastian, the British kings of twee-core, they rear up and make a big, scary noise. Pitchfork did a good job of describing the music: "Clap Your Hands traffics in melodic, exuberant indie rock that pairs the shimmering, wafting feel of Yo La Tengo with a singular vocal presence that sounds like Paul Banks attempting to yodel through Jeff Mangum's throat. Or imagine the Arcade Fire if their music were more fun-loving and less grave."
Mr. Ounsworth's vocals are a thing of strangled, urgent beauty, replete with head waggle to better squeeze out the sound. But if his singing brings to mind Thom Yorke or David Byrne, he looks to others for tutorials in how to have a career and a life at the same time.
"Wire, Joy Division, the Sex Pistols, they got started because they had something indescribable to say, not because they wanted to be famous," Mr. Ounsworth said.
Nick Stern, who has a day job as a record company executive at Atlantic, manages the band, as much as anyone can.
"They have managed to put themselves in a position where other people really can't influence their decisions," he said. "Most bands dream of getting signed. You get in a band, you get signed and then you get famous. That is not how they think about it."
The Web's ability to taste-make in musical matters means that the traditional bloody crawl through a major label is one way of achieving success, but just one way. Much in the fashion of Arcade Fire, the multi-instrumental combo from Montreal that sets hearts to fluttering wherever it goes, Clap Your Hands is a band that found its way into the hands of fans almost on its own.
Mr. Ounsworth does not read music magazines or Web-surf much - he spends a lot of time taking long walks with his dog in what he calls "the urban forest" of Philadelphia - so he said he had no clue about how the band was doing in relation to other outfits or the music business as a whole.
"I don't really understand the business or the sense of competitiveness," he said. "It's like when Hemingway talked about doing better than Flaubert. How do you say, 'Well, I beat Flaubert'?"
Not that he wants to go back to his last job, which was renovating houses in Philadelphia. He likes making records. "There is a certain kind of narcissistic excitement to going back to a record and realizing that we made that," he said. "No matter what else happens or doesn't happen, we made a record with songs that other people were interested in."
Measuring authorial intent in Mr. Ounsworth's songs is a dicey matter - he prizes and utilizes opacity - but "Over and Over Again (Lost and Found)," a song that name-checks David Bowie to hilarious effect, seems to veer toward a commentary on the rock-star life that Mr. Ounsworth is trying to dodge:
Success is so forbidding
But it makes me think I'm winning
Quiet
Dim the lights
Adopt another lifestyle
One of the surest routes to indie stardom is a turn on "The OC," the teenage soap that uses bands like Modest Mouse and the Subways to provide a soundtrack to all the ambient, youthful angst. Clap Your Hands said, "No thanks."
"There is this keen sensitivity to giving in to 'the man' with Clap Your Hands," said Jonah Weiner, an associate editor of Blender, the monthly music magazine. "Given how many indie bands have embraced the attention that they are finally getting, it almost feels anachronistic, and of course, that only adds to the attraction for a lot of the people that listen to them."
Mr. Ounsworth toys with the conveyor belt of fame even as he avoids it. In an interview not long ago, he said he was looking forward to the perks of stardom, including having someone to go to the bathroom for him. He clearly thinks a lot of the hype and journalism that have followed the band is very much beside the point.
"We are living in a time when the world has become so small and communication has become so prevalent, so that if somebody wants to find you, they will," he said. "We just don't want to deal with a lot of the imagined obligations that go with playing our music."
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