Up till now, the Double Encore E.P. was just a bonus we stuck in the envelopes of supporters who were particularly generous during the pre-order campaign. But starting today we’re letting it stand on its own — you can hear the whole thing for free in its entirety right here, or on the Music page, and you can buy it, if you’re so inclined.

Also, a site called Coverville has a podcast featuring twelve different Clash covers. The first eleven are all songs from London Calling (by acts ranging from Social Distortion to the Honeydrippers), but they slipped in our take on “Janie Jones” as a bonus at the end.

The first is an interview with an Iowa paper, written by my friend Kembrew McLeod. Kembrew’s a prankster as well a respected academic, so you can understand why we get along. We did the interview over email, and the actual transcript exceeded his word count, so maybe I’ll post the unedited version at some point.

The second is actually four separate entries at a pretty cool new site called songfacts.com. They asked us for the details behind four tracks from the new album, and we happily obliged.

Tomorrow we head to Different Fur studios in SF to record a few songs for broadcast on KUSF on Sunday. Feels good to play live with real live human beings. I’ll try to remember my camera and post some pix from the studio tomorrow.

The band will be doing another Wine Time with Wonderlick webcast this Saturday night, 7/11,  at 6pm PST. Tune in, and bring your own bottle of wine — if you have a webcam, you can broadcast yourself as you watch (it’s actually kind of fun when everyone toasts one another). We’re contemplating starting an advice segment, so if you have any relationship or mother-in-law problems, send them in before Saturday, and Wonderlick will distribute sage advice to you during the chat.

We’ll also be performing a few songs and getting interviewed on KUSF on Sunday afternoon, sometime between 4 and 6pm PST. You can listen live here.

Here’s a nice little blurb about the album from philly.com.

Oh, that picture is a drawing of Johnny Cash I apparently made in 1970, when I was 5 years old. It fell out of an old scrapbook last night, and seemed worth sharing, since “The Possibilities” is based on a clip of Mr. Cash appearing on The Tonight Show in 1964.

I have a friend who called me a Yuppie Punk once. When I complained, she insisted that it was a compliment, and that she wants to be one someday, too.

We’ll get it up on the Press page later today. Looks like I’m already repeating lines between interviews — a bad habit I try to avoid, but I’m out of practice.

In other news, Abby tells me she’s pleased with video, but won’t show it to any of her friends, “because there’s a vibrator in it.” I was laughing about that with video’s producer, Lauren Tabak, who was equally mystified. “Really?” she said. “It’s not the hardcore pornstar? The heaps of gay? Dad?”

If you haven’t seen the video yet, it awaits you below.

By all means, hit the word “share” and send it to friends…

It’s based on a poster I saw a few years ago in an exhibit of WPA art. In that one, the shadow was being cast by a heavily-muscled arm holding up a big steel hammer. I don’t know how people saw it at the time, but in retrospect I can only admire the weird combination of idealism and naivete. (Side note: if you like this sort of thing, and you’re ever in San Francisco, go check out Coit Tower. The WPA murals that ring the lobby are as much fun to look at as the view from the top.)

The design was done by Jeff Castellana, whom we’ve been working with since last year’s Love & Television EP. He’s sprinkled all kinds of stuff like this throughout the CD packaging. We figure, if you’re gonna make a concept record, you might as well treat it like an actual record, even if CDs themselves are starting to feel old-fashioned.

(Picture of a Coit Tower mural after the jump)

I like watching music videos, but I hate being in them. Miming is evil.

Jay’s a little more of a ham than I am, but neither of us feel compelled to spend an inordinate amount of time in our own video. So a bunch of gracious volunteers will be sitting on this couch today, making out to the strains of “This Song is a Commercial” (the chorus, after all, goes, “Gimme a kiss!”).

The original laptop that was going to capture the footage crapped out; and I banged my head on a low ceiling, opening up a nice little gash; and the first couple didn’t show — nice to know that nothing ever really changes, as this has pretty much been the story on every video we’ve ever shot.

This is Lauren Tabak and Alexa Inkeles, producers extraordinaire:

Their production company is called Hi-Fi DIY, which is basically Wonderlick’s aesthetic, so it’s a perfect match.

More shots from the set after the jump.