Death Cab for Cutie returned to the NPR office to perform their second Tiny Desk Concert.
Death Cab initially made their Tiny Desk debut in 2015, with just Ben Gibbard on vocals, Zac Rae on piano, and Nick Harmer on bass. Now, fresh off the release of their new album I Built You a Tower, they return as a full band, adding Dave Depper on guitar and Jason McGerr on drums. They opened their set with two cuts from I Built You a Tower, “Pep Talk” and the wistful “Stone Over Water.” They then shifted gears for some older tunes, dusting off Transatlanticism‘s “Title and Registration” and closing out the show with the Plans cut “Soul Meets Body.”
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“A lot of [our songs] are becoming oldies now,” Gibbard said before “Title and Registration.” “I’m starting to realize that some of our earlier records came out a similar distance away from, like, the Beatles records when I was a kid.” Depper responded by telling Gibbard to “stop that,” to which he responded: “That’s how time works, Dave.” Later, before playing “Soul Meets Body,” Gibbard jokingly introduced the song as “a Napalm Death cover,” alluding to the grindcore band’s recent Tiny Desk debut. Watch Death Cab for Cutie’s Tiny Desk Concert below.
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Death Cab just capped off a particularly big week — the band performed two unique sets at Outside Lands last weekend, with an early set serving as a full play-through of Plans and an evening show serving as a career-spanning set. They also concluded their 2026 North American tour in support of I Built You a Tower, with shows still to come at Seattle’s Bumbershoot, a date supporting Twenty One Pilots in Ohio, and a headlining show at the Salt Shed in Chicago. Get tickets to see Death Cab for Cutie here.
Meanwhile, we named I Built You a Tower one of the Best Albums of June 2026.
