Counting Crows have officially announced the release date, cover art and track listing for their latest project, Underwater Sunshine (or What We Did On Our Summer Vacation), a collection of cover songs that mostly skews towards obscure with a few familiar tunes. Recorded in 2011, the album not only marks the return of the band to recording for the first time since Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, but also its first independent venture since splitting from longtime label Geffen Records. As indicated in that departure, the band is utilizing grassroots ideology in promoting the new album via social networking and free album streaming. They’ll also take to the road for the first time in a few years, which has always been their most successful and viable forum, and where many of these songs first took root.

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