What is the deal with Minus the Bear?

The Seattle-based indie rock quintet has no trouble selling out small venues. But when they're part of a larger festival, Minus the Bear runs the risk of being one of the unnamed bands grouped as "others."

The band once was known for ridiculous, arbitrary song titles like "Just Kickin' It Like a Wild Donkey." They began moving away from that style on 2005's "Menos el Oso," and the heady, just-released album "Planet of Ice" completes that transformation.

While Minus the Bear has always specialized in jittery, angular guitar punches, the still-impressive "Planet of Ice" eases up on the frantic energy in favor of some broader arrangements and an extra-hypnotic quality to Jake Snider's restrained vocals.

We sought some answers from Snider while he hung out at the band’s Seattle practice space.

Someone wrote that your voice is so passionless, you might as well be singing about the ham sandwich you had for lunch. Does that make you want to belt out a song about a ham sandwich?
No, not really. I'm a laid-back dude in reality. My personality is mellow and not in-your-face and not aggressive. When we're playing, I'm not like, "Hellooo, New Jersey!" If it sounds like I'm singing about a ham sandwich when I'm not, then fuck it. Maybe I'm singing about a ham sandwich and I just don't know about it.

Is the recent lack of jokey song titles reflective of the band growing up, or do people make too much out of it?
It seems to take up a lot of text: people talking about [song titles] rather than what's going on in the songs. So we just kind of migrated away from doing that. I mean, we did that just out of entertaining ourselves when we were starting out. And it just became more of what the band was about than we intended to other people. We thought we'd give 'em a little less to talk about in that regard.

In the video for "Knights," special effects turn your eyes inside out and your mouth upside down. Is that strange for you to watch?
Bad! It looks awful. That part of the video was something I wasn't really into but I totally thought it was cool. And so if I didn't think I was into it, it's because I felt personally like, "I don't like seeing myself look that fucked up and weird."

Will you counteract it in a future video?
Like one that gives me airbrushed, bigger pecs and stuff? Remove my blemishes and all that? Yeah, I don't really care. The band looks good anyway. We don't need airbrushing. But we certainly don't need our features turned upside down.

Keyboardist Alex Rose wrote a blog post about wanting to get beer pong into the Olympics. How's that going?
It's not good. I didn't know that we were campaigning for that right now. But I wish him all the best with his efforts. I'm not going to be very involved in his crusade to have beer pong expanded to a legitimate sport. I see too many problems with it. Liability and whatnot.

Then you won't be signing up for the American team?
No. I'm not good at it. I would be one of those people that gets drunk and passes out. I wouldn't make it to the second round.