Last October, local pop-rock outfit Said the Whale landed in the iTunes top 10 with its album Islands Disappear, spending a week on the best-sellers list and peaking at number five. On Tuesday (February 16), it hopes to take the digital retailer by storm again, releasing an iTunes-exclusive EP, Bear Bones. “Our original plan was to make an acoustic EP that would go along with an iPhone application,” singer-guitarist Tyler Bancroft told the Straight. “We listened back to the recordings and they sounded pretty good, so we thought we’d do an acoustic EP by itself, then do an iPhone application.”

The EP includes five tracks, two of which are rerecordings of previous Said the Whale songs. A bizarre new version of the single “Emerald Lake, AB” reimagines the sunny pop gem as a freak folk experiment. “We just went crazy with a keyboard and a delay pedal,” Bancroft said with a laugh.

The band is hoping to release its iPhone application, which will feature “photos from the road accompanied by stories from the road and acoustic songs as well”, by summer.