Snowden signs to Kings of Leon's Serpents & Snakes Records + new video "The Beat Comes"

Kings of Leon's Serpents & Snakes Records are excited to announce that they have signed Snowden, the moniker of Austin, TX-based Jordan Jeffares.

Formed in Atlanta in 2003, Snowden released its first full-length album, Anti-Anti, in 2006 via Jade Tree, which was praised by Pitchfork for its "crisply efficient songcraft" and "stylish post-punk."

In February 2012, Jordan recorded his much delayed sophomore album, No One In Control, in the Benton Harbor, MI-studio of Bill Skibbe (The Kills, Jacuzzi Boys). The record is slated for a Fall 2012 release.

Snowden will play a run of East Coast tour dates this summer, kicking off at New York's Mercury Lounge today (July 24th), and culminating at The Garrison in Toronto on August 2nd. The full list of tour dates is below.

Last week, Snowden released the first single off No One In Control, titled "The Beat Comes," via their website. "The Beat Comes" begins with a quiet acoustic guitar, and creeps towards an lush, atmospheric crescendo, with synth-encrusted rhythms and percussion at its brooding core. Jeffares simultaneously emotes dread and gloom with relief and acceptance, through one of his more uptempo vocal performances.

Snowden - "The Beat Comes" video:

The John Merizalde directed video, which is a spin on the classic boxing training montage, was shot in two days, at the Decatur Boxing Club and then in various locations around East Atlanta. Stereogum called the video a "beautiful mini film," praising the track's "muted yearning and rousing choruses and a locomotive pulse, with richly textured production."

Perhaps due to its extended incubation period, No One In Control diverges from the Lower East Side Britpop dance party motif of its predecessor. It also moves away from the wryly observant, barfly narrator, opting for a guide occupying a more mature, plaintive, and, at times, existentialist headspace. Anti-Anti's tracks begged to be remixed, emphasizing pulsating rhythms that undergirded Jeffares' strident assertions about the pointlessness of hipster ideals or the ennui of nightlife scenes. In contrast, No One In Control stays truer to the genesis of all Snowden's output-- the seemingly hermetically sealed cocoon that Jeffares escapes to when doggedly transforming an abstract concept into a piece of music.

While roots have been pulled and replanted over the past six years, band lineups have gone through several iterations, and labels have come and gone, Jeffares has managed to keep his focus. He credits his stalwart supporter and earliest patron, his brother Preston, for keeping him focused in moments of frustration. With his older sibling's sage stewardship, Jeffares has put together the most sonically sophisticated collection of tracks he's penned and constructed to date-effectively moving beyond influences such as Interpol, The Zombies, and The Clientele to carve a niche of his own in the post punk landscape.

Snowden 2012 summer tour dates:

(Dates and information subject to change.)

7/25 - Washington, DC - DC9
7/26 - Chapel Hill, NC - Local 506
7/28 - Atlanta, GA - The Earl
7/29 - Nashville, TN - The High Watt
7/31 - Chicago, IL - Subterranean
8/1 - Detroit, MI - Garden Bowl
8/2 - Toronto, ON - The Garrison

For the latest tour dates and more, go to:

Snowden Official Website