Death Cab for Cutie

Death Cab for Cutie started in Bellingham, Washington, in 1997 around Ben Gibbard, a sensitive, wordy singer who played guitar and piano and who could make a lonely night sound like a novel. Chris Walla played guitar and produced, Nick Harmer played bass, and early members Nathan Good and Michael Schorr came and went before drummer Jason McGerr settled in for good in 2003.

The early records are small, careful, inward-looking things. Something About Airplanes came out in 1998, followed by We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes in 2000 and The Photo Album in 2001, and each one sharpened the band's gift for melody and introspection. Then Transatlanticism landed in 2003, the breakthrough, a record full of patient, slow-building crescendos, with the title track and "The New Year" as its twin peaks.

Plans, in 2005, was their major-label debut, and with Transatlanticism it helped pull indie rock out of the basement and into the mainstream. "Soul Meets Body" is all soft shimmer and tidy heartache, "Crooked Teeth" bounces, and "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" strips everything down to a hush. The band earned a Shortlist Music Prize nomination in 2005.

After that they got bigger and braver. Narrow Stairs topped the album chart in 2008, with the hypnotic "I Will Possess Your Heart" and "Cath", and Codes and Keys, in 2011, gave them "You Are a Tourist". Walla left before Kintsugi in 2015, and Dave Depper and Zac Rae came on board. Thank You for Today, Asphalt Meadows and I Built You a Tower in 2026 kept them going, and they've been called one of the definitive indie bands of the 2000s and 2010s.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.