The week is barely half over, but the Song of the Week competition is officially over.   The winner was dropped yesterday by one of our long-time favorite bands, the redacted Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.  CYHSY (essentially, now only Alec Ounsworth) has delivered the outstanding Coming Down, the lead song off of “their” impending new album Only Run (out in June).  The song is a tour de (rock et) force beginning with its de rigueur fuzz-guitar and evolving quickly into a huge U2/Radiohead-esque anthem.  You’ll hear shades of both Bono and Yorke (as worked well through the CYHSY filter) in Ounsworth’s vocals, but will later hear the best (only?) counterpoint baritone singer in the business, The National’s Matt Berninger.  The two combine fantastically in this epic jam.

CYHSY were one of the original internet-indie blog bands and blew up huge like a comet in 2005.  They subsequently put out some great recordings, but in this what-have-you-done-for-me-lately era CYHSY were overlooked in the maelstrom. Now that The National have finally blown up (by way of the non-comet slow-burn) it’s great to see Berninger burnishing his baritone on behalf of fellow heyday-Brooklynites.  We can’t wait for Only Run.  Check out Coming Down below.