David Bowie News

Veteran rock duo They Might Be Giants will return July 10 with their first new "rock" album in three years, "The Else."

The 13-track Universal release was produced by the Dust Brothers, who previously worked with the group on a 1993 remix of "Snail Shell."

"We came up with a couple of ways of working," Giants principal John Flansburgh told Billboard.com. "We got loops from them early in the process, a huge collection of their delightful drum loops. That's how we started a bunch of the tracks. Then they came to New York and helped us re-assess stuff we'd written and demoed on our own. There's a third of the songs which they were not involved with, but we wanted to be of a piece with the rest of the record."

"Withered Hope" and "Upside Down Frown" were written over the aforementioned drum loops, while "Take Out the Trash" was got the Dust Brothers treatment later in the process. "I'm Impressed" is one of the songs featuring just Flansburgh and collaborator John Linnell, "but it reflects working with (the Dust Brothers)," Flansburgh said. "It sounds like it belongs on this record as opposed to a record from a few years ago."

Another new song, "The Cap'n," sports "a loop of a stadium rock crowd clapping along rhythmically," according to Flansburgh. "It's underneath the entire song but you only hear it at certain moments." It also features a stylophone, a rare '60s-era keyboard that can be heard on David Bowie's "Space Oddity." "I own two of these and they're both broken at this point," says Flansburgh. "They sound like nothing else."

They Might Be Giants will spend two weeks in May previewing new material on the road, beginning May 3 in Newmarket, N.H. "The general plan is to be really, really on tour in the fall in a bus," Flansburgh reported.

Here are They Might Be Giants' tour dates:

May 3: Newmarket, N.H. (Stone Church)

May 4: Burlington, Vt. (Higher Ground)

May 5: Northampton, Mass. (Iron Horse)

May 8: Charlottesville, Va. (Starr Hill)

May 9: Pittsburgh, Pa. (Mr. Small's)

May 11: Asbury Park, N.J. (Stone Pony)

May 16: New York (Joe's Pub)

May 18: Las Vegas (Orleans Theatre)

May 19: San Diego (Belly Up Tavern)

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter