Jan 24, 2017

It’s nice to know that Alec Ounsworth is still moving ahead with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. His band’s bar was set quite high with the 2005 self-titled debut, an album that almost seemed to create its own sub-culture of music fans. In the three albums since, Ounsworth has continued to put out quality music, if not as widely acclaimed. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s new self-released album The Tourist is due out February 24th and the new song “Better Off” was shared today.

Along with The Tourist’s lush and progressive production – mixed by Dave Fridmann, who also worked on two previous Clap Your Hands Say Yeah albums, 2007’s Some Loud Thunder and 2014’s Only Run – there’s a close focus on lyrical content and vocal melody and Ounsworth’s limber falsetto nimbly rides the sunlit wave of “Better Off”. Listen Here.

A press release previews the upcoming album: “The Tourist emerged from a period where Ounsworth was doing a lot of intense soul-searching, and processing personal events that irrevocably shaped his life and future. But although most of these songs came together during this time of reflection, he considers the record to be cathartic—an exhale of sorts, rather than a collection of songs where he was indulging in self-pity or letting things stagnate or fester. “The album was a type of purge,” he says. “A purge of certain emotional confusion that manifested itself in the last several years. It was not an easy album to make, by virtue of the fact that it was an emotional time for me.”

“Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s career arc is all about building on previous successes while staying true to a core artistic vision. And although The Tourist may have emerged from challenging times, it reflects Ounsworth’s uncanny ability to move forward, no matter what the circumstances” – Charles Steinberg