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 Aleksey 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 Aleksey 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.