We’re totally excited that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (CYHSY) have been added to the lineup to this year’s XPoNential Music Festival on Saturday, July 23rd. In case you didn’t hear the recent news about them, the band announced a new album called Hysterical – coming out September 20th – a reissue of their debut album on vinyl on June 14th and a tour.

So you may be asking, why all the excitement? Don’t bands typically make records and tour? Well, yes. But in Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s case, there have been rumors since early 2009 that the band was breaking up. Adding to the rumor mill was the fact that lead singer Alec Ounsworth released two records in 2009: a solo album called Mo Beauty; produced by Steve Berlin and an album called Skin and Bones by his side project called Flashy Python.

None of this would matter one bit had the band’s debut album not had the impact it did. CYHSY’s debut album released in 2005 was a bona fide music blog/indie rock sensation when the band self-released the record at the end of 2005. There were two major reasons why the band’s debut is so important. The band really harnessed the power of the internet and the idea of giving out music for free along with the fact that they made a great sounding album that to this day has a unique voice of its own. In February 2006 WXPN selected the band as an Artist To Watch and has supported the band since the release of the debut album. Produced and mixed by Adam Lasus (who spent time here in Philly working), the album and the band gained popularity after the MP3 music blog buzz rose to a feverish pitch. It didn’t hurt that the album got a 9 out of 10 by the music web site Pitchfork. They wrote at the time:

The record is consistently, remarkably strong, but “The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth” in particular stands out, with its richly buzzing synth phrases, textbook Modest Mouse guitar lead (a trebly, gliding string bend skimming over the rhythm like a flat stone over a pond), contrapuntal bass, and shuffling drums. The song also features one of vocalist Alec Ounsworth’s most memorable performances: He ramps up the urgency as the heavier chords kick in, his voice cracking and shifting in cascading waves as if someone were pressing his vocal cords to a fret board and bending them. “Is This Love?”, with its clean, galloping guitars and fruit loop synth trills is the song most blatantly redolent of Neutral Milk Hotel (especially of the unhinged pop and careening vocals Mangum favored on On Avery Island), and its dizzily wowing vocal harmonies carry over to “Heavy Metal”, where fuzzed-out bass and wheezing harmonica punch smart shapes into the fizzy guitars.

There’s something really refreshing about stumbling across a great band that’s trembling on the cusp without any sort of press campaign or other built-in mythology– you actually get to hear the music with your own ears. While a lot of bands view the promotional apparatus as a necessary evil, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah prove that it’s still possible for a band to get heard, given enough talent and perseverance, without a PR agency or a label. Indie rock has received a much-needed kick in the pants, and we have the rare chance to decide what a band sounds like of our own accord before any agency cooks up and disseminates an opinion for us. Damn, maybe this is how it’s supposed to work!

And work it did. To Pitchfork’s point the band saw great success and CYHSY released their follow up album. Some Loud Thunder in 2007.

Clap Your Hand Say Yeah’s performance at the XPoNential Music Festival will be the band’s first Philly show since a sold-out show at the Starlight Ballroom in 2007 since they played a couple of shows at the Barbary in September, 2008 (thanks to a fan we stand corrected!) . It will also be their first show of the summer and Fall dates they are doing. We’re extremely happy the band decided to join us for the festival this summer, and we hope you will join us for the weekend. Buy your tickets here