The Egg Presents: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Performing The Debut Album

With support from Knifeplay

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah celebrate the 20th anniversary of their landmark self-titled debut album throughout 2025 with a worldwide tour performing the album in its entirety alongside other surprises, and an exclusive new reissue.

A heady blend of leftfield pop and melodic, exuberant indie rock, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is unquestionably among the finest and most influential independent releases of the 2000s. The celebration officially gets underway with the premiere of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s original 2004 version of the fan favorite, “Heavy Metal”. The newly remixed and mastered track was recently discovered among the original project files and captures what Clap Your Hands Say Yeah founder and frontman Alec Ounsworth calls “a special moment in time – a young group of guys all piling into one hotel room to wake up and go to a real studio (!) to try to come up with something special just for the fun of it.” 

In addition to the digital anniversary release featuring the original version of “Heavy Metal,” a special deluxe reissue will arrive on limited edition vinyl LP in early 2025, released on CYHSY’s own label via Secretly Distribution, the defiantly independent home to over two decades of Alec Ounsworth’s music.

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Knifeplay is a band that eludes definition, existing somewhere between the nihilistic detachment of shoegaze and the emotional honesty of folk songwriting. They’ve made a slow and careful shift from being the solo bedroom recording project of songwriter, Tj Strohmer, to a collaborative, production-focused studio-recorded band. Through their ever-expanding genre palette, range of fidelities, and a long list of collaborators runs a unique mood that ties everything together.

Informed by his experiences living in Philadelphia and their contrast with his rural southern Maryland upbringing, Strohmer’s sometimes straightforward, sometimes dreamlike lyrics feature scenes of darkness from many different aspects of life. He deals with themes of death, drugs, heartbreak, abuse, and self-destruction, all expressed through an androgynous vocal style, which, combined with the band’s lush, often dense orchestral instrumentation gives a beautiful lightness to the heavy subject matter.

Knifeplay has earned a dedicated cult following since their 2017 debut with their home-recorded Eps, acclaimed debut album Pearlty (2019), a lengthy B-Sides Compilation (2020), and an EP Hurt Someone (2021 Born Losers Records). The latter of which was a part of their 2021 studio work with acclaimed Philadelphia engineer/mixer/producer Jeff Zeigler.

Knifeplay is: Tj Strohmer (guitar, vocals, songwriting), Alex Stackhouse (bass), John Scortino (drums), Max Black (keys), John Klein (lead guitar)