Death Cab for Cutie is an American rock band formed in Bellingham, Washington in 1997. The band consists of frontman Ben Gibbard (vocals, guitar, piano), Nick Harmer (bass), Dave Depper (guitar, keyboards, vocals), Zac Rae (keyboards, guitar), and Jason McGerr (drums). The band was originally a solo project by Ben Gibbard, who later decided to expand the project into a complete band. In 2014, founding guitarist and producer Chris Walla announced that he would be departing from the band after recording their eighth studio album, Kintsugi.

Frontman Ben Gibbard took the band name from the title of the song written by Neil Innes and Vivian Stanshall and performed by their group, the The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, in The Beatles‘ 1967 film, Magical Mystery Tour. That song’s name was in turn taken from an invented pulp fiction crime magazine, devised by Richard Hoggart as part of his 1957 study of working class culture The Uses of Literacy. In a 2011 interview, Gibbard stated “The name was never supposed to be something that someone was going to reference 15 years on. So yeah, I would absolutely go back and give it a more obvious name.”