Formed in 1993, Low is from Duluth, Minnesota, and features Alan Sparhawk on vocals and guitar, Mimi Parker on vocals and drums, and Matt Livingston on bass and vocals. Sparhawk and Parker are married with two children; they first met in fourth grade in rural Minnesota.

Drums and Guns is the band's eighth full-length album and second for Sub Pop. It's also, after 2005's The Great Destroyer, the second album they've recorded with producer Dave Fridmann. Drums and Guns features a number of songs that ardent Low fans will recognize from the band's recent live shows. These songs appear here in substantially altered forms, as though they've been taken apart and reassembled in striking new ways, or seen with new eyes. Or, given the lyrical emphasis on murder and death, a more insightful interpretation might see the band killing these songs and bringing them back to life anew. There's no contrivance here, however. While these songs feature new elements (looped vocals, drum machines, etc.) and are thoroughly, radiantly contemporary, they remain undeniably Low's. Drums and Guns possesses the unique, subtle beauty and power we've come to expect from Low, but the record is also profoundly exciting in ways that it's easy to forget music can be.

You can read a bit about all this from Low's Alan Sparhawk, on Low's own website here.

And then, you can read a whole lot more about the Maasai School Project on their website, here,  and see photos of Alan's trip to Kenya this past August here. Because often things that should go without saying don't: you could do worse things than donate to this project yourself.

Here's some info on the record from the folks at Silber:

"The entire album was recorded live using guitar loops & reverb allowing a greater immediacy & improvisation to the guitar work than a more orchestrated approach would allow. Without the constraints of working with any sounds not at the control of his hands or feet, Sparhawk is able to push his guitar to fill the entire audio spectrum. The songs begin with single notes that often build up to be larger than an orchestra playing Ligeti. The disc shows both sides of guitar drone, the aggression of playing a guitar by beating it with a fist & the inherent peacefulness in a heavily reverbed slow crescendo."

We've heard it and it does.

Here's where you can download and presumably listen to a track from the album: "How the Weather Comes Over the Central Hillside"

More here.

Low has released an EP, "Tonight the Monkeys Die," featuring remixes of the original track "Monkey" from The Great Destroyer. Fog, Bob Mould, Stephin Merritt, Crew Jones and The Count all contribute remixes. The EP also features the original album track and the full-length video.

You can buy a copy of the EP here if you'd like.