Since we're using Twitter for updates, I'm probably going to stop posting here (not that updates were very frequent anyway). At some point we may get rid of this page, but for now I'm going to leave it, in case there's something longer than 140 characters we need to post (like this!). So for news, look no further than the main page. Or you can see the same updates on our Facebook page, direct from Twitter, or in your own RSS reader.

Also, don't forget to come here our Muse cover show this Thursday at Gluek's!

So we're on tour. We played two shows in Fergus Falls, MN Friday and Saturday night, which was awesome. Everyone loved us, and we met tons of cool people. Thanks a bunch to Robbin and Marguerite! Also, we've added another show in San Diego, and may possibly go on to Austin, TX to play ACL again (not sure about that just yet). But for now, on to Vegas...

Since adding news posts is such a pain in the buttocks, I've created a Sika twitter account for tour updates. We've been tweeting for a couple days now. I'm still trying to get it linked to our Facebook page, but in the mean time I've added a twitter widget to the website here. I'm sure you saw it on the way in. That'll be the best way to get news to you guys while we're on the road (don't look for too many more posts here on the news page during the tour), so if you're on Twitter, follow us at @sikaband. I'm using Tweetie on my iPhone, and I can upload pictures from my phone and map links off the GPS signal, so you can see where we are and follow along.

Show tonight at Lee's Liquor Lounge. The tour is coming up fast, and we're trying to raise some money, so come if you can! Dave's built some sweet bunkbeds in the bus, Nate and Rush are working with Brody on getting us a show in Austin on the way back from San Diego for ACL, which will be awesome if it works out. I'm trying to finish Airports and Runaways so we've got something to bring with us and sell/hand out. And of course we have to play music in the meantime! It's gonna be a busy couple weeks here.

Oh, by the way. Asleep Again (naphini Remix) won second place in the JPF Music Awards, Electronica category! Not bad, I say. If you haven't heard the song, it's on our Phenomenon EP, and you can find it on iTunes.

The August 28th show (this friday) has been cancelled. We're trying to reschedule it for a couple weeks from now, but that's uncertain. In the mean time, the next show is September 3rd, a week from thursday, at Gluek's. We'll be doing another double set: Radiohead, as well as originals.

The L.A. mini-tour is shaping up. We now have shows in Las Vegas, L.A., and San Diego, and we'll be starting it off with a couple shows up in Fergus Falls. But we've got several shows in the cities still before we go, so click on 'shows' above to see when and where. First one is next week on the 28th at Lifetime Fitness, where there will be tennis playing and music on the courts, with our friends Thought Theives, and some very special guests.

The EP is still coming along, but won't be done in time for the tour, since all our time right now is taken up getting ready for that. We are committed to finishing Airports and Runaways before we go, however, so maybe if you're lucky you'll get a sneak preview!

Good news. Our song, Asleep Again (naphini Remix) from The Phenomenon EP was nominated for a JPF Music Award in the Electronica category! You can see the list of song nominees here (out of over 560,000 songs submitted, they say). If you scroll down to Electronica, you can see Sika there in the list. I don't know how many Electronica songs they heard to begin with, but it looks like there are 20 nominees in that category, including us. I didn't count the exact number of genres, but it says "70+", so there would be an average somewhere in the neighborhood of 8,000 songs submitted per genre. Not bad! I don't know what the next step is, but we'll keep you posted.

Also, don't forget about our next show this Friday, July 3rd, at the Uptown Bar.

As you can see we have a big show coming up. 9:00 at Gluek's this thursday we'll be playing a Sika Double Feature. One set of Sika originals, and one set of Radiohead covers, though we haven't decided which one we'll do first. It'll be all ages until 10pm, after which everyone under 21 will have to go home and go to bed.

Once again, sorry about the dearth of posts here. After SXSW and the last Radiohead show we've been working quite a bit on new material. Several songs are in the works, but none of them will be ready for the next show, unfortunately. I think by the Uptown Bar show we'll have one or two finished. In addition to that, we're recording another EP, which I think will easily be our best (and longest) one yet. The goal is to finish that before L.A. this fall. Oh yeah, we're booking a small tour to California, where we'll play the famous Whisky a Go Go. See? The news comes in rare but potent bursts here at sikaband.com :)

Well, SXSW was awesome. We played a really good show, and the whole city of Austin was electric with music. Metallica and Kanye West played at bars just down the street from us, and there were, of course, about a million people walking around carousing. We drove down and back non-stop in the brand new Sika Love-Bus (TM). It was hot (as in sexy). Thanks to Aaron for letting us stay at his place in Fort Worth for a day. After that we headed down to Austin, and spent the rest of the trip trying to park the bus in downtown Austin in the middle of the festival. Well, ok, we managed to park in time for the show, but it was harrowing. We played a good set, ran into a lot of friends, and naturally stayed up all night every night.

Thanks especially to Rose, but also Brody and everyone else for making the trip possible. We're hoping to capitalize on the excitement of it all, and some more mini-touring may be in store in the near future. For now, make sure you come see us on April 9th at Gluek's where we'll be playing all your favorite Radiohead songs (at least all the Radiohead songs that should be your favorites). Check it out on Facebook for more details.

Hey all. It's been awhile since the last update, so here's the news. As you may have heard, we're going down to Austin again, this time to play around the South by Southwest festival. We'll be doing a few shows down there between March 18-22, and we're all looking forward to some warm weather.

Also, we're working on several upgrades to the website, and possibly some new merchandise. I'm hoping to re-do the site with Drupal so we can treat this news section like a blog (meaning we can all sign on and post) instead of just me going in and editing the html by hand every time. Then you'll get more punctual updates. If we do that, we can easily add other dynamic functionality as well. No promises on the timeline for that, but we're working on it. In the meantime, always check our myspace blog, since Rush often posts news items there. We'll probably use that to blog about the SXSW mini-tour while we're down there.

Thanks everyone for making Saturday's show awesome. We successfully debuted a new song, despite half the band being sick, and the place was packed. Thanks to Brody, Tom at the 400 bar, and Joey Ryan and the Inks and Victory Ship.

There's a short review of the show at TC Daily Planet, which we've linked to on the main page, if you want to go read that. We'll let you know about the next show shortly. Happy MLK day, and happy The-last-day-of-President-W day.

Surprise! Our new single was released on iTunes today (and many other online stores). It's called Voice. You can find it on iTunes by clicking here. We've only played this song in concert once or twice, so you probably haven't heard it at all! Exciting! And all for only 99 cents. So use that to whet your Sika appetite until next saturday, when you'll be able to hear us play the songs of one of our favorite bands, Radiohead. That one's at O'Gara's in St. Paul, next saturday the 20th. A little pre-Christmas Sika for you. See you then, and don't forget to check out the new single!

We had to cancel the December 13th show at the Hard Rock Cafe. That means the next show is coming up Dec 20th at O'Gara's, where Sika will play all radiohead covers! This is the first time we've done an all-cover show, so I think you'll enjoy it. Bring your friends. Don't worry, that surprise is still coming!

The upcoming show in December that was to be at Trocadero's has been moved to the Hard Rock Cafe on December 13th. Check back here for more news related to that show. In fact, we'll have a surprise to announce for you between now and then! Suspense!

Here's our facebook blog entry about the Austin City Limits show in Texas (written by Rush on September 30th) for an up-close look at how the trip went:

Hey everybody,

I'm writing this blog as we are driving through Kansas in the middle of the night, 4:30am to be exact. Went to sleep at 5am last night and slept only 5 hours. Nate and I just finished our driving shift, now it's Dave's and Sara's turn. We are coming home from arguably the trip of our lives. Here is what happened with us in the last three days:

Since our original keyboard player John couldn't make the show, we hired Sara's good friend Kevin from Sol Spectre to sub for him. He had a difficult task in front of him, to learn our set in one day and perform it with us live for music industry people in Austin, TX at the ACL afterparty. Kevin, being a super talented and professional musician that he is, learned all the songs in two rehearsals. On a Wednesday night instead of going to sleep we practiced till 3am, then packed our gear in a brand new rented van and took off for TX at around 5:30 on Thursday. Nate and I took the first shift and stayed up until 10:30 while everybody else slept, or tried to sleep I should say. The one thing I learned on this trip is it's hard to sleep in the van. People talking, music playing, little room, and don't get me even started on Sara's driving. It's a miracle in itself that we are still alive. We kept switching drivers all the way through the day until we arrived in Fort Worth, TX to pick up our friend Aaron at around 9pm. We ended up staying at his house for the night cause we were spent from driving all day and not sleeping for 26 hours. Next morning we continued our journey and after another 3.5 hours of driving we were finally in Austin.

Really nice and clean city is what you would really expect from the US capital of music. The 6th street has seen many great musicians, and now Sika was rolling into town to leave its modest mark on the grandiose history that this place has. We were greeted with arms wide open, so to speak. We got to the venue, loaded in, and met the restaurant owner Shawn, who at first look appeared to be a tough and moody guy, but as we soon figured out, it wasn't the case. He was really cool to us for the rest of the time. Soon after our arrival to this prestigious five star restaurant right in the heart of the 6th street, he told us that we could go ahead and order whatever we wanted off the menu. What a meal that was! Crab, salmon, fluke, yellowtail were some of our selections that night. Let's just say that five star food didn't let us down.

The show that night was organized by the lady named Rose to whom we were refered to by our friend Brody. Short and ever smiling, she instantly became our favorite. She also had some huge contacts who came to the party, but I will talk about them later. We played last that night after White Light Riot and the Alarmists lead singers accompanied each other for their nicely done acoustic sets and really talented signed TX band performed. By the time we went on it was 1:30, the place was pretty empty and the remaining party goers were "slightly" intoxicated. The sound wasn't great and I thought it wasn't our best show overall, but somehow people who were still there liked us. We got to our hotel room at around 4am far beyond exhausted but with the sense of accomplishment.

The next morning we got up and after some free time, went to the venue. We needed to rehearse a few new songs cause "master Yoda" (the nickname we gave to Kevin for his stellar ability to learn songs in minutes) needed to polish his parts. After practicing for quite some time and enjoying once again great cousine of Parkside restaurant, we were ready to play our second show. This time we went on much earlier which definitely worked in our favor. There were quite a bit more people in the audience and our set sounded much better cause we mixed the sound ourselves. Just like the night before, we played Russian cartoons visuals on the huge flat tv screen right on the side of the stage. They became a huge hit right away and helped us a great deal to showcase our full show. At the end of the set we took a few requests from Rose's co-workers. We did a couple of MUSE covers to the great excitement of the crowd (it was a small crowd of people packing that small room on the second floor of restaurant by the end of our set). Finally we finished our set with a much requested acoustic cover of Radiohead's "Creep." The show was a great success! Many people talked to us afterwards were really impressed. Rose, the lady who put all this thing together, liked us a lot. Her friend David Z (Prince's producer), Patrick (CEO of TNT Records, and ex-EMI president, if I'm not mistaken), Kenny (guitarist for Kid Rock who is just about to launch his own project), guitarist for Robert Plant band, and some others were among those who also gave us a positive response. After socializing and afterpartying, I got to our hotel room at 5am feeling very grateful and blessed to have this opportunity.

The next morning we loaded our equipment in the van, and met Rose and her friends for lunch. Then we played tennis with them at the local courts, which was a great deal of fun for all. Finally we left around 5pm and headed towards Ft. Worth again. We dropped Aaron off and continued our journey home cause "master Yoda" has some classes he has to attend on Mon morning. So, we arrive where I started this blog. Driving. Driving. Driving.

We definitely got a taste for what it takes to be touring musicians. It's a really fast-paced life that is not as easy or glamorous as it seems, but it's still what we want to do. It remains our dream and now it's one step closer.

The show in Austin went really well and was an amazing experience (even though our keyboardist couldn't be there!), so special thanks to Kevin (of Sol Spectre) for coming along and filling in. To read more about how that went, check out our myspace blog.

So, moving right along, we have an important show coming up this friday already (that's Oct 24th) at The Back Room as part of the after party for the Sigur Ros: Heima screening put on by Sound Unseen. The show will begin at 8:00PM and will be 21+. There is a $5 cover unless you have a film ticket or festival pass. This is an important show for us, because we'll be having some important guests watching, so the more of you who can come out (hey, it's friday night anyway) the more we will like you :0). See the following links for more good stuff regarding the show: (map) (info)

Looks like Sika will most likely be playing the Austin City Limits Music festival this weekend, with the Alarmists and White Light Riot. Things still could fall through, but so far it looks positive, if the details work out. Torgo won't be able to go, so a friend of the band's may fill in on keyboards. We'll let you know how that goes.

Check out the clip on the main page of our show at the Fine Line opening for Secret Machines, courtesy of Brody McCoy. Also, visit the music page to find another entry in The Tape Drawer. We've since debuted the first entry, Santa Mia, live, and you'll recognize this one from our recent shows as well. Still fairly new, it is yet untitled. Feel free to suggest a title. Soon, we'll add some more tape recordings, perhaps new songs, perhaps some old favorites that have yet to make it onto an album.

Well, after awhile without shows, we had three this last week, including an opening slot for Secret Machines at the Fine Line, which yielded this flattering blog post from someone at the show. We also played our second outdoor show ever, downtown Minneapolis at the Aquatennial Tennis Tournament, in which Nate and Rush took second place in men's doubles (they have won the tournament in previous years).

Also in the news, Torgo has been busy all summer composing the score for The Chasm, a movement piece by the Disquietude Theatre Company that will premiere this Thursday, July 31st, at The Ritz Theater as part of the Minnesota Fringe Festival. Based on the poetry of Gabriela Mistral, the show deals in movement and music with desolation and fecundity, death and motherhood. It was written by Hector Roberts and is directed by Sheila Regan. If you're interested in hearing the darker side of Torgo (scary!), this is your chance.

Sorry it's been so long since the last update. To make up for it (and to prove we've not been idle) we're debuting a new part of the website. If you go to the music page, you'll see a new section, entitled The Tape Drawer. In this section, we will feature impromptu recordings of new songs, in some cases before we've even played them live.

This week, you can hear a brand new song called Santa Mia, which is our latest song. Soon, we'll add a few more works in progress. These are recordings we sometimes make of our practice sessions in the studio, either on tape or the computer with a couple room mics, so don't expect it to be too polished (watch out for those cymbals!). But you can stream or download these songs, and hear new material as it is written, instead of having to wait until it comes out on CD, so enjoy!

We've uploaded a highlight reel of the original Varsity show, The Phenomenon, to YouTube. Featured are all the best moments we could fit into 10 minutes, and in case you skipped over it, go back to the home page and watch. We're working on editing together all the back-logged material of our old shows, and we'll be uploading that stuff to YouTube as we go. Thanks extra-specially to Jon Arp for filming most of that, by the way.

In other news... after the last 7th Street show (which was sick) we're back in the practice studio rearranging things and writing some brand new material. Of course, we'll be sure to let you know how that's going (think more electronic stuff), and stay tuned to hear when the next show will be so you can hear us debut it. Peace for now.

Thanks, everyone, for coming out and making the 7th Street show awesome. Tonight we're playing at the Triple Rock as part of England Swings VII, a multiple-band tribute to British music. We'll be playing a short set of Muse and Radiohead covers. Hope to see you there!

We'd like to announce that Sika is now on YouTube! As you probably noticed on the main page, we have added a video of an interview we had before our first show at the Varsity. To find our video channel on YouTube, just click here. We'll be adding some video of our live performances in short order, but it'll take some time to edit them down nicely, so we'll keep you posted.

After a little hiatus, Sika is proud to announce our next show. We'll be opening for nationally touring band The Helio Sequence at the 7th Street Entry on May 14th. The Helio Sequence has been featured on Jimmy Kimmel live and toured with Modest Mouse (one of the members played drums at one point for Modest Mouse). Click on that link to go check out their website. Looking forward to seeing you at the 7th Street again!

Continuing a series of website updates, we've just added song-playing functionality to the music page, so you can preview some tracks (in full!) off both the new and the old EP. Up next: Video. Hopefully.

So we've updated the main page, as you can see, and included links to reviews of our EP's and shows. Also, we're very excited to announce that Sika is now on iTunes! You may click here to check out How To Dream With Your Eyes Open on the iTunes store!

As you saw on the front page, Torgo has entered a Radiohead remix competition (officiated by the band itself) under his pseudonym naphini. If you haven't already, you can go to the main page and listen to the remix. Please vote for it! The more votes it gets, the more likely that Radiohead will hear it, as they have pledged to listen to the "best" remixes.

Also, the naphini website has been updated for the occasion. Check out the new site with never-before-available free downloads of naphini's music at www.naphini.com. Thanks for voting!

Check it out. We've recently added online music sales through CD Baby! Now if you haven't been able to make it out to a show recently to buy the new EP, you can go here and buy both of our EP's online. Also, coming soon, Sika on iTunes!

As you can see, we've put up some shots of the show last night. It was awesome. Thanks to Jon Behm for taking those, and look for his review of the show to appear in the near future at howwastheshow.com. Thanks to all who came out and made our second Varsity show a success! Always feel free to leave us comments on the new CD by email: sikasikaband.com.

Welcome to the new website! Look for more features to be added soon, like streaming music samples, an updated picture gallery, and perhaps some video content as well. In the mean time, don't forget to come to the Varsity CD Release show on thursday, and be the first to pick up the new EP! See you there.

After taking our leisurely time for months and months, we've been scrambling to get the recording finished in time for the Varsity show (only a week and a half away!). I'm relieved to say that its done, and we're sending it off to get printed (after mastering). Also, the show will feature brand new visuals that Rush is putting together with the help of some friends. If there's time, you may even see a whole new website before then!

But before we get to all that, we have a nice saturday night warm-up gig at Tiffany's in a week, and it would be swell to see you all there. Those of you that've seen us there before know it's really fun on a weekend. Packed and cozy. More to come...

Well, our first show at the Cabooze went pretty well, but we need more people to come out for the next several shows, so any day you can manage to come out and support us, we would very much appreciate it. Next is this coming wednesday at Trocadero's. Hopefully it will have warmed up by then, so you can climb out of the den for a few hours. See you there!

C Novym Godom! A year closer to death, a year closer to new life.

Thank you very much to Gregory B. for taking more photos of the band (he took the one to the left as well, fyi), a few of which, for an unspecified time, you can sneak preview at timeintopixels.com, near the bottom of the page.