Celebrating 25 Years of Yeah Yeah Yeahs in 5 Songs

Yeah Yeah Yeahs will celebrate its 25th anniversary with a run of theater shows on the upcoming Hidden in Pieces Tour.

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“Hi, we’ve missed you, they don’t miss you like we miss you,” the band said in a press release. The tour begins June 16 at the O2 Apollo in Manchester, England, and concludes with two shows at New York’s Beacon Theatre July 29–30.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs released a self-titled EP in 2001. It arrived three weeks before The Strokes’ debut Is This It. Both bands were part of a New York City scene that reshaped American rock music. The trio’s latest album Cool It Down was released in 2022.

So here’s to a quarter century of Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Wait, they don’t love you like I love you.

“Maps” from Fever to Tell (2003)

The garage revival bands from the 2000s represented an underground movement. But following breakthrough albums by The Strokes and The White Stripes, the revivalists were no longer underground. However, no one could have predicted how “Maps” would penetrate pop music. Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone” shares its DNA with Karen O’s heartbreaking ballad. And O’s stunning, tearful performance in the music video remains a defining visual from the time.

“Gold Lion” from Show Your Bones (2006)

An acoustic guitar opens “Gold Lion” and presents a very different side of Yeah Yeah Yeahs. You can hear the influence of Pixies and Siouxsie and the Banshees as the track builds to its fuzzed-out peak. Finally, Nick Zinner’s psych-punk guitar layers lift Karen O to reach some kind of exalted state as she crows, “Ooh, ooh!”

“Heads Will Roll” from It’s Blitz! (2009)

The guitars take a back seat to a gushing synthesizer and Brian Chase’s rigid groove. With Zinner’s guitar pushed further back in the mix, it sounds like a gritty dance floor anthem. But it’s more like the moment when you’re not sure if you’re having a good time. To illustrate the point, the band gets murdered in the music video, leaving Karen O with a severed head.

“Sacrilege” from Mosquito (2013)

For Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ fourth album, they returned to their early sound. They had taken a musical detour on It’s Blitz! which features the punk disco of Blondie. But Mosquito aims for the messy noise of Fever to Tell. Though it doesn’t have the splattered discord of the first album, “Sacrilege” sounds like the long evolution of the band. And you can still hear the noisy bleed of a cramped rehearsal room. But with a gospel choir backing Karen O as she becomes lovesick over an angel.

“Spitting Off the Edge of the World” from Cool It Down (2022)

Nearly a decade passed between Mosquito and Cool It Down. But Yeah Yeah Yeahs returned with “Spitting Off the Edge of the World,” a song as emotionally intense as “Maps.” It features Perfume Genius and feels like the threshold between hope and dystopia. Perfect for a society that, at times, feels like it’s trying to destroy itself from the inside out. Thinking of the bands from the early 2000s, none of them have recorded anything as powerful as this. Utterly beautiful.

Photo by Rick Kern/WireImage