Arcade Fire, the indie-rock band that surprised everyone with its meteoric rise, releases its third CD, “The Suburbs,” today. The album is already receiving amazing reviews and attention, like this New York Times feature from this past weekend: “[Their songs] mingle the punky and the symphonic, the cryptic and the heart-on-sleeve, the self-doubting and the anthemic, often with surging crescendos that make the tunes optimistic despite themselves. It’s both a stomping rock band and a mini-orchestra.”

For rare photographs and the behind-the-scenes story of the band, including how they started and came to the indie record label Merge Records (and why they, along with Spoon and others, stayed), check out Algonquin’s fantastic, photo-heavy book Our Noise: The Indie Label That Got Big and Stayed Small.

You can get a sneak preview of the album on NPR here or catch them LIVE.

On August 5th their performance with Spoon at Madison Square Garden will be streamed live on YouTube–directed by Terry Gilliam! Be sure to tune in here at 10:00pm Eastern Standard Time.

-Kathy (Kathy Pories is a Senior Editor at Algonquin)