Formed in the tiny college town of Bellingham, WA, Death Cab for Cutie started out as a solo project from engineering student and committed indie rocker Ben Gibbard. Having turned a freshly broken heart into nine songs he wasn't embarrassed to share with someone else, he recruited fledgling four-track producer (and fellow Teenage Fanclub fan) Chris Walla and bassist Nick Harmer, the most amiable (and comic-book obsessed) musician on campus. The result was the 1997 cassette, You Can Play These Songs With Chords. To set the record straight, the band's name comes from a song performed by British jazz/rock/comedy combo the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band in the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour film. Having created a substantial body of work as a band, Ben, Chris and Nick looked around and realized this wasn't a college extracurricular anymore, this was a life. Chris returned to his first love, producing, working on widely hailed releases by The Decemberists, The Thermals, Nada Surf, and Travis Morrison. Ben spent some time in the L.A. neighborhood of Silverlake recording electropop songs with his friend, producer Jimmy Tamborello. This little side project, called The Postal Service, yielded an album, Give Up, that has, to date, sold over 600,000 copies.
