Nick Harmer

Death Cab for Cutie (commonly abbreviated to DCFC or Death Cab) is an American rock band formed in Bellingham, Washington, in 1997.

Death Cab for Cutie's music has been Classified as indie rock, indie pop, and alternative rock.

The band is currently composed of Ben Gibbard (vocals, guitar, piano), Nick Harmer (bass), Dave Depper (guitar, keyboards, backing vocals), Zac Rae (keyboards, guitar), and Jason McGerr (drums).

The band was originally a solo project by Gibbard, who expanded the project into a complete group upon getting a record deal.

Death Cab for Cutie, the name deriving from the Vivian Stanshall/Neil Innes song "Death Cab For Cutie", began in 1997 as a solo project by Ben Gibbard when he was a guitarist for the band Pinwheel.

He recorded under the name All-Time Quarterback.

As Death Cab for Cutie, he released a cassette, You Can Play These Songs with Chords, during the same year.

The release was surprisingly successful, and he decided to expand the project into a band, hiring Chris Walla (who worked on the cassette) on guitar, Nick Harmer on bass guitar, and Nathan Good on drums.

Death Cab for Cutie was formed at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.

Lyrics from early songs include local references that were important to the band's development.

Many of the early songs were recorded in the basement of a house on Ellis Street in which Gibbard lived with several roommates.

They released their debut album, Something About Airplanes, in 1998.

The four released their debut album, Something About Airplanes, on August 18, 1998.

In 1998, the band met their manager, Jordan Kurland.

Kurland had heard the band praised, and after a failed attempt to see them perform at South by Southwest he met them while touring with a client.

The band released We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes in March 2000.

Nathan Good left the band during the making of the album and was replaced briefly by Jayson Tolzdorf-Larson.

Gibbard played drums on the majority of the album, with Good's playing on "The Employment Pages" and "Company Calls Epilogue" kept on the final release.

Although Tolzdorf-Larson did not contribute to the album, he did appear on the song "Spring Break Broke" from the "Death Cab for Fiver" 7-inch record.

He also joined the band on two tours, including their first full tour of the United States.

Tolzdorf-Larson was later replaced by Michael Schorr, who would first appear on The Forbidden Love EP, released on October 24, 2000.

In 2001, Death Cab for Cutie released their third album, The Photo Album.

Limited editions of this album contained three bonus tracks, which were later released separately as The Stability EP.

The album produced the band's first charting single, "A Movie Script Ending", which reached number 123 on the UK Singles Chart, and was the first of three songs by the band to be used on the television show The O.C. "I Was a Kaleidoscope" and "We Laugh Indoors" reached numbers 115 and 122 on the UK Singles Chart, respectively.

The band's fourth album, 2003's Transatlanticism, broke into the mainstream both critically and commercially; its songs were featured in various TV series and films.

In 2003 there was another change of drummer with Jason McGerr, who had previously played in the band Eureka Farm with Gibbard and Harmer, joining the band.

McGerr's debut came with the band's next release, their fourth album Transatlanticism, which was released in October 2003.

The album received critical acclaim and launched the band into mainstream commercial success, with the two singles "The Sound of Settling" and "Title and Registration", appearing in the soundtracks of the television shows The O.C., Six Feet Under, CSI: Miami and Californication, and the films Wedding Crashers, Easy A, and Mean Creek.

In early 2004, the band recorded a live EP, entitled The John Byrd EP, named for their sound engineer.

It was released on Barsuk Records in March.

Death Cab for Cutie had been contacted by major labels on-and-off for several years, but it was only after the proven success of Transatlanticism that they decided to start talking to labels about a potential deal.

The fact that they had already achieved considerable success allowed the band to negotiate with a lot of creative freedom.

According to their manager Jordan Kurland, the band had spoken to "pretty much all of them", and then decided they were most satisfied with their offer from Atlantic Records.

In November 2004, the band signed a "long-term worldwide deal" with Atlantic, leaving their long-time label Barsuk Records.

Gibbard stated on the band's official website that nothing would change, except that "next to the picture of Barsuk holding a 7", there will be the letter 'A' on both the spine and back of our upcoming albums." After signing to Atlantic, the band was still nervous about corporate economics, and encouraged fans to download its songs from the Internet.

The band's major label debut for Atlantic Records, 2005's Plans, went platinum.

A tenth-anniversary version containing demos and outtakes was released in 2013.

Founding guitarist Chris Walla left the band in 2014 after 17 years.

The band's tenth and latest studio album, Asphalt Meadows, was released on September 16, 2022.

Alongside their ten full-length studio albums, the band has released four EPs, two live EPs, one live album, and one demo album.