At this point, it should be a surprise to nobody that Ellen DeGeneres is into indie rock and that she sometimes lets indie rock bands play on her massively popular daytime talk show. Also, Death Cab For Cutie have been a huge band for many years, and they’ve played plenty of TV shows to promote the release of their new album Thank You For Today. It’s just a thing that happens.

But let’s say, hypothetically, that you once drove an hour and a half, in the winter of 2001, to watch Death Cab play a show at a small college in upstate New York. Let’s say that college, which must’ve had someone cool in charge of the concert board, had just booked Low and Pedro The Lion a few months earlier, and so you found yourself wondering what it must be like to go to this college. Let’s say there were maybe 200 people there and that the guys in the band were drinking at the bar after the show with the kids who’d just watched them play. It would be pretty weird, then, to beam yourself forward in time 17 years and to watch Death Cab play a soft and agreeable rock song on Oprah’s heir’s daytime talk show. Wouldn’t it?

Death Cab played “Gold Rush” on Ellen today. They sounded nice. Ben Gibbard still has basically the same haircut. Ellen seemed happy, and she sent everyone in her audience home with a CD copy of Death Cab’s album. Watch the video below.

Thank You For Today is out now on Atlantic. If you were in the live studio audience for Ellen, you already own it.