They Might Be Giants Continue Making Childrens' Music Parents Don't Hate

They Might Be Giants know that the children are not only our future, they're the band's future fans.

As we reported several months ago, when TMBG signed a Disney deal, the first recordings they turned in to The Mouse House were for, fittingly, a children's album. Here Come The ABCs! will be released on February 15.

So if Valentine's Day doesn't go your way, you can always slink down to the record store and regress to childhood, courtesy of TMBG. The record is a follow-up to NO!, the band's 2002 kid-friendly release. That album featured the Giants' usual level of oddball quality once you got past the slightly simplified songs — tackling everything from robots to the ghost of Thomas Edison to beddybyes.

Hopefully ABCs! will continue a trend of talented artists producing children's music that doesn't make parents want to stuff cotton in their ears. While NO! had a bonus computer-animated component for the little-uns, this new package will come with a DVD filled to the brim with cartoons, illustrations and puppets to accompany the music.

In an interview on RollingStone.com, one of the band's core members, John Flansburgh, said he recruited artists from various outlets, including MTV, Pixar and Disney and also brought his puppeteer wife in on the project. The idea is to foster a more solid connection with the kids (moving images always inspire rapt attention) — consider it the Teletubbies technique.

The alphabet-lovin' Giants will play only one live performance to support the record, a July concert in the band's hometown, New York City. Meanwhile, they've been in the studio recording some tracks for a CD to accompany an upcoming children's book, and are busy writing their next set of songs for people who stopped growing long ago. TMBG's last completely non-educational record was 2004's The Spine.