Dear fans who can read,

Tonight is a big night for fans of short-form comedy that stars members of bands. That's because at either 22:55 or 23:55 this evening, our emotionally sophisticated new show Steve Wants His Money premiers on MTV in the UK. (The reason for the confusion about air time is simply a matter of this show being so red-hot to the touch that the folks at MTV are having a hard time handling it! They sent an intern out to buy metaphorical oven mitts, but he's hasn't come back yet! So everybody keeps dropping our show in unpredictable places!)

So here are the specifics on how Steve show will roll out: every Sunday night for the next seven weeks a new episode will premier on MTV (the main channel, guys). Throughout the ensuing six days, the new episode will repeat on the various MTV networks: MTV, MTV2, Base, Hits, Dance and MTVR. We think the show is going to appear in programming guides, but it may appear as "We Are Scientists present... Steve Wants His Money" or simply "Lil MTV", which is the umbrella name for MTV's big foray into funny short programming.*

As we get more accurate info, we'll feed it to this website and to Twitter and to the print version of Time Magazine. That includes details on when Steve show will be viewable outside the U.K. (shouldn't be too long...). Anyway, take a look and let us know what you think in the comments section of this very goddamn post!


* Other shows that MTV has commissioned for Lil MTV include Snuffed Out Too Soon, a show about people, mostly homeless people, mostly kids, who were killed on camera in snuff films; and Nailed In The Caboose, a historical survey of famous men and women who at one time or another were sodomized. Snuffed Out Too Soon is hosted by Robbie Williams, and Nailed In The Caboose -- we've heard -- is being hosted by Jack White(!). Haven't seen either, but they sound LOL.

You manacled mimes,

It's an exciting time in the world of We Are Scientists, a world that sits comfortably within the perimeters of the known universe, blanketing roughly 80% of it. For one thing, we've got our first shows of the summer coming up this week, just weeks before they'd be disqualified from the summer season altogether. Have a look:

Thursday, 30 July - CAMBRIDGE, MA - The Middle East (w/ Bear Hands, Bad Girlfriend)
Friday, 31 July - NORTHAMPTON, MA - Iron Horse Music Hall (w/ Bad Girlfriend)
Sunday, 2 August - NEWARK, NJ - All Points West Festival (w/ Coldplay, MGMT, Echo & the Bunnymen)

Besides the usual mix of hard-rocking country jams and R-rated cabaret-style dance theater, we'll be slipping a few surprises in during these sets. We're talking about things you have simply never seen, and never ever heard. For those of you living outside of traveling distance to these shows, expect a full recap next week -- for now, we've decided to embrace vagary in the interest of causing some heart attacks in the audience.

If this seems like a big tease, trust us when we tell you that this is the kind of tease that you meet at the bar, spend three hours courting, and are about to write off, when everything suddenly accelerates and you find yourself mattress-dancing in a half-star motel down the road -- neon-colored light spilling through the single-ply curtains, the faucet head pissing continuously onto the mirror out of a cracked seal, roaches cocking their antennae inquisitively at the unscheduled performance taking place in the middle of the room, the obsessively repetitive embodiment of a skipping record. And then, of course, there is the first pregnancy, and the second, and the truly-unwanted third. There are the fluctuations in career satisfaction, in lifestyle satisfaction, the waning of thickness and color of hair. There are preschool graduations and high school graduations, and the child who drops out of college, and the one who will never leave college. There are exotic pets, uncreative vacations, larger houses, and, once the kids have all moved out, a smaller one. There is the largely pleasant if blue-tinted shift into much older age, during which so many of the most tangible aspects of your daily life, you find, exist only in memory, the greatest exception, of course, being the person you once spent a couple of hours thinking was probably just a tease, just someone looking for a little entertainment to while away the hours till last call on a Thursday night. And now the two of you have whiled away two entire lives together, largely to the contentment of each -- certainly you are happy to have avoided the solitude so many of your friends seem to be spending their declining years immersed in.

Hope to see you at the shows!

You Poorly Reasoned Arguments,

Two exciting things to tell you about:

1) There's a new iPhone coming out this summer. Chris got ahold of one this morning and wrote up a review. As near as we can tell, this is an exclusive -- the FIRST iPhone review anywhere on the net! Check it out here.

2) We're not doing a whole lot of live work this year; the focus is on crafting the very finest instrumental ambient music album we possibly can. There are one or two exceptions, though. We did Coachella last month, of course. Later this summer we'll be at All Points West in the NYC area. When it comes to intimate, in-a-person's-face type shows, though, there may actually be just this one:

Sunday, May 31st
The Detroit Bar
Costa Mesa, CA

Kind of strange, eh? 2009: one show, in Costa Mesa, CA. Sorry if you live in London, or Japan! Sorry if you live in Boston, or Auckland, or Sao Paolo! Congratulations, though, if you live in Southern California. Congratufuckinglations to you. This should be pretty good. Tickets are being designed here.

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More of these sorts of ideas can be read at wearescientists.com and at Chris's Twitter feed.

On January 21st, a new MTV show called "What You're Watching with Alexa Chung" will shoot a pilot in New York City. We will be performing a song or two. If you want to be in the audience, just send an email with your name and age to mtvshowcasting@mtvstaff.com and put "WAS" in the subject line. They'll get back to you shortly with either great news (you're in!) or terrible news (you're too old/your name is wrong!).

Finally, Chris and Alexa will appear in the same room together, proving, once and for all, that they are not the same person.

We're playing a show at IndigO2 in London next week (on the 18th, for you calendar junkies) with The Charlatans and Newton Falkner, and we've got 100 pairs of tickets to give you, our faithful fanbase (slutty members of the fanbase are okay to win these, too). PUT YOUR LUCK TO THE TEST, you who have only ever experienced loss.

And of course it's "NATO Presents: Chick Lit Week" this week, which means that we are in a heated battle with hip-hoppers, crooners, rockers, and Van Morrison for that most coveted of chart positions: 15. If you want to help us acquire this grail, you can buy the vinyl or the CD, or you can download the mp3. B-sides include an acoustic take .. Hours; the lovely, driving Gauntlet; and Dance Off, which is very literally danceable. There are also two remixes -- one by Matt Helders (Optic Monkeys) and one by Danger -- that will turn your Chick Lit listening party into, well, a real party.

Take care of yourself! Chew multivitamins at all times, as cows chew cud!

You spandex oil tankers,

 It's CHICK LIT Week this week, as declared by NATO. How will you celebrate? We asked a best-selling novelist, a Turner prize-winning artist, and a platinum-selling musician to spend a weekend together at a picturesque retreat in the Scottish Highlands coming up with a few ideas:

1) Order all three physical formats -- a CD and two vinyls -- for ₤3.

2) Download the digital bundle from iTunes for ₤2.50 and get remixes by Matt Helders and Danger.

That's all these people, these celebrated creators, came up with. Buy the physical, buy the digital. When they reported back to us, after the weekend in the Highlands that we had paid for, we looked them right in the eye and told them, "Great job, everyone!" The fact is, we're intimidated by their CVs. But we're fairly sure they're not on our mailing list, so this is the time for us to say, "Really bad job, you guys." ("Super disappointing results from you.")

Well one thing WE'RE doing to celebrate "NATO Presents: Chick Lit Week" is playing some acoustic shows at some record stores. It's a tradition! Here's where we'll be:

Today, ACTION RECORDS, Preston
Tuesday, FOPP, Nottingham
Wednesday, SPILLERS RECORDS, Cardiff
Thursday, SISTER RAY, London

Please join us if you love half an hour of acoustic music and you live anywhere in the UK or northern Europe. From Iceland is also not too far to travel (consult your travel agent for more information). We don't recommend coming from the Mediterranean, South America, Asia, etc. You'll be disappointed. Finland, say, would be on the fence; depends how much you love half an hour of acoustic music. Mexico: too far. Luxembourg: come. Algeria: too far. Germany: come. Switzerland, even: come. New Zealand: stay home; do something else.