Okkervil River films stand ins covering Stand Ins

It's almost too much, really. As anticipation builds for The Stand Ins, Okkervil River's follow-up to last year's The Stage Names, the Austin band has begun to fan its fans' desires by opening up a YouTube channel with covers of all the album's songs. Covers, that is, before the Sept. 9 official release of the originals—crazy.

Songwriter and frontman Will Sheff explained the conceptual tie-in with the album in a video on the band's website: "Basically, we thought it would be really neat if we took some of the people that we'd met in our ten years as a band—you know, some of our favorite friends and performers and writers to kind of be our 'stand ins'"

So far, we've seen power-pop pro A.C. Newman (with Sheff, standing in on secondary vocals for Okkervil's own recently departed Jonathan Meiburg) with opener "Lost Coastlines," singer/songwriter David Vandervelde with "Singer Songwriter," Australian soundsmith Jack Ladder with "Starry Stairs," and now Paste Best of What's Next artist Bon Iver with "Blue Tulip." Each musician's take is a bit different than Sheff's, Justin Vernon's high-pitched, ethereal version of "Tulip" the most significant departure out of these four.

Listen to the album verson of "Lost Coastlines" here, and be sure to keep up with the video posts here.

Related links:
OkkervilRiver.com
Okkervil River on MySpace
Pre-order The Stand Ins at Jagjaguwar