The Walkmen Merchandise

The Walkmen are an indie rock band from New York City. The band formed in 2000 with three members from Jonathan Fire*Eater—Paul Maroon (guitar, piano), Walter Martin (organ/bass), and Matt Barrick (drums)—and two from The Recoys, Peter Bauer (bass/organ) and Hamilton Leithauser (vocals, guitar). All but Bauer attended St. Albans in Washington, D.C.

They prefer the sound of vintage musical instruments, particularly the upright piano, and have often recorded at Marcata Recording, a recording studio built in Harlem in 1999 by the three former members of Jonathan Fire*Eater and later relocated to upstate New York.

The 2002 debut album Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone, released by the independent record label Startime, was well received by critics. The follow up album, Bows + Arrows, was released on the Record Collection label in 2004 and was listed by many critics[specify] as one of the year's best albums.

Their next album, A Hundred Miles Off, was released in the U.S. on May 23, 2006. The band premiered most of the new songs on a tour of the Northeast in early 2006. The first single to be released was "Louisiana." Peter Bauer and Walter Martin traded musical instruments on the new album with Bauer handling the organ duties and Martin playing bass. The same year, they released another full-length album: "Pussy Cats" Starring the Walkmen, a track-by-track cover of Harry Nilsson and John Lennon's 1974 album Pussy Cats, recorded as a farewell to their studio's Harlem location.

Their most recent studio album, You & Me, became available July 29, 2008, in an exclusive charitable pre-release on indie music website Amie Street. The Walkmen made their album available for US$5 at AmieStreet.com/thewalkmen, with all the proceeds from each sale being donated to the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.[2] During its first week of sales, the album charted at #29 on Billboard's Top Digital Albums.[3][4] The album was made available on physical formats on August 19, 2008