My Brightest Diamond is gearing up to release their second full-length, A Thousand Shark’s Teeth, but you can catch some of those songs a little early live and in person tonight if you’re in the SanFran area. Pedestrian and A Weather are opening for MBD at The Independent. Doors open at 8:30, and tickets are $13. You can buy them by clicking here.

For those outside the Bay area, you’ll be happy to know that MBD just re-launched their website, replete with photo, video, "tweets," and all the wit and charm you’ve come to expect from MBD. Visit the site here.

Bonus! Pitchfork’s Forkcast column just posted an exclusive video of MBD, featuring Shara Worden and her guitar in Austin. View it here.

My Brightest Diamond’s second album, A Thousand Shark’s Teeth, is just a little over a month away from release. To whet appetite, the band is releasing its first single and announcing tour dates. We are also activating preorders for Shark’s Teeth, which you can make from SCDistribution here. Preorders will receive access to download an exclusive bonus EP to hold you over until release. Click more, below, for details and tracklist on this EP, or here to see MBD’s tourdates, which include a few European dates, LA, NYC, and Boston.

Already, the first single from the album, "Inside a Boy," has received an outpouring of internet love from bloggers and forum posters. The digital release of the single includes this track, as well as the beatbox-driven fantasy tapestry rock "I Had A Pearl." Also included is a cover/remix version of album track Black and Costaud by friend Tim Fite (Anti-) and a remix of Inside A Boy by Son Lux (Anticon).

You can buy Inside a Boy from iTunes here for $1.99, or at your favorite digital music store.
This downloadable bonus EP is a fully realized collection of alternate versions of the album tracks plus one album outtake.  Orchestrated and complex, yet spacious and  direct, these versions are a rewarding listen for the opportunity to hear how the songs have mutated into their final form. It also provides a sneak peek into what is bound to become one of the standout releases of 2008.

Tracklist of 1KST Bonus EP
1. Apples (alternate version)
2. Bass Player (alternate version)
3. To Pluto’s Moon (alternate version)
4. If I Were Queen (alternate version)
5. The Diamond (alternate version)
6. Music Box (outtake)

No, don’t worry, we are not ending, but we are happy to announce that we have partnered with writer/culture-provocateur Amanda Stern and her Happy Ending Music and Reading Series to present a night of…well, what else…music and reading. On April 2nd at 9:30PM Asthmatic Kitty’s Michael Kaufmann and Amanda Stern will be hosting this event at Joe’s Pub in New York City. The music will be presented by My Brightest Diamond, accompanied by strings. Also presenting will be three very fine writers: Alec Bemis, Daphne Carr and Rob Sheffield.

We are very thankful to BOMB Magazine for their sponsorship and Joe’s Pub for staging the event. Click here to visit Joe’s Pub website to purchase tickets.  And you can read more about the series and writers by following the more link below.

Alec Hanley Bemis lives in Brooklyn, NY and spends a lot of time in California. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, LA Weekly, The New Yorker, and our own website and many other fine publications. Among his many music-related activities, he founded the Brassland label with The National and Clogs in 2001, and currently acts as general manager at Bang on a Can’s Cantaloupe Music label.

Daphne Carr is a music journalist, critic, and ethnomusicologist living in New York City. She is the Series Editor of Best Music Writing (Da Capo 2007, 2008), author of Nine Inch Nails Pretty Hate Machine (Continuum 2007), contributor to the books Marooned: The Next Generation of Desert Island Discs (Da Capo 2007) and Listen Again (Duke University Press 2007).

Rob Sheffield is author of Love Is A Mix Tape (Crown, 2007).  He is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, where he writes the “Pop Life” column.  He’s written about music and pop culture for the Village Voice, Spin, Details, Mojo, Radio On and other publications.  He frequently discusses the Bananarama legacy on MTV and VH1.  His karaoke jam is the Commodores’ “Easy.”

The Happy Ending Music and Reading Series, chosen by New York Magazine and NY Press as the best reading series in NYC, and singled out by the New York Times Magazine for helping to "Keep downtown alive," features the most interesting storytellers, writers, musicians, raconteurs and personalities, and requires the readers to take one public risk, while the musicians, who perform two short sets with their original, lyric-driven music, are required to play one cover song and try to get the audience to sing along.

IFC has just launched a new independent music blog they’re calling Indie Ear. Spearheaded by Jim Shearer, formerly of MTV’s 120 Minutes and Subterranean, the site looks very promising. We’re of course very honored that Indie Ear chose Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond to inaugurate its Q&A section, wherein Shearer grills Shara on cheerleading, stage costumes, and being mistaken for a hiphop DJ. You can visit Indie Ear here, and read the interview with Shara here.

Also, consider this a reminder to those of you that might have been lucky enough to buy tickets already: MBD is opening for The National at the Brooklyn Academy of Music to sold-out crowds on Friday and Saturday night. The National always put on a fantastic show, and Shara will be playing with string quad Osso, so it should be quite a round. For those that bought tickets of course.

Tom Eaton, animator of Sufjan Stevens’ "Put the Lights on the Tree" video," has released a new short entitled "Don’t Smash"! And what’s more, our very own Shara Worden from My Brightest Diamond plays the bunny (she has a special place in her heart for the furry creatures). Click more for the YouTube video.

My Brightest Diamond has crossed the ocean! She’s touring in Europe for September, hitting the festivals and then some clubs in the UK, Germany, and Switzerland. After that she’ll return home for a brief spin around the Midwest, Canada, and New England, joined this time with Tim Fite. Tim crafts some very fine sample-pop gems. If you don’t believe us, go to his website and download his latest album, Over the Counter Culture…FOR FREE! Then you can even sing along at the shows! 

Click here for tourdates.

Shara Worden, of My Brightest Diamond, recently covered Radiohead. Next on what seems to be a list: Huey Lewis and the News. Her swooning cover of the classic "Naturally" will appear on the upcoming Huey Lewis tribute album, Are You Still With Me?! Click here to visit the album’s MySpace page and stream the track.

Once you get past the fact that it has really been a decade since you first borrowed Radiohead’s OK, Computer from your roommate and never gave it back, you should check out Stereogum’s brilliantly curated tribute, OKX. The revisit features a track-by-track cover of the album from artists like David Bazan, John Vanderslice, and Marissa Nadler Feat, as well as our very own My Brightest Diamond. Somewhere between tour stops with Rasputina (see here for details), Diamond lead Shara Worden managed to record her vision of "Lucky." In her notes on the track, Shara does tell, "We cannot commodify the value of being able to listen to this record for years and not tire of it . . . Yes, we gush and are unashamed of our love."

Click here to download the free album, and here for the artist notes.

Photo by Murat Eyuboglu After successfully traveling with The Decemberists as a three-piece, My Brightest Diamond will shear it down to just one: the indomitable Shara Worden donning her trusty guitar. She will open for the well-costumed trio Rasputina on their tour of the South and West, while they promote their freshly finished full-length, Oh […]

Video directed by Mark Schafer to an excerpt of Stakka’s remix of "Disappear" from the album Tear It Down.