On April Fool's Day, frequenters of (for shame!) file-sharing media were likely stoked to add a most recent acquisition to their (evil! counterfeit!) collections: Death Cab For Cutie's forthcoming Narrow Stairs (out May 13 on Atlantic). Except the joke was on them: The piano textures and eerily Ben Gibbard-like vocals did not in fact belong to Death Cab, but the German group Velveteen, who appeared both confused and delighted after friends and fans e-mailed them about the prank.

Velveteen singer/guitarist Carsten Scheauff tells CMJ: "Our website exploded, and then our MySpace exploded, with fans e-mailing us, and then MTV contacted us. We're happy about the exposure but at the time we had no idea what was going on!"

The culprit turned out to be music blogger Jerome Holeyman, who tried something similar last year, disguising a Cut Copy album as Interpol during anticipation for the then-unreleased Our Love To Admire. On Friday, Holeyman told MTV News: "I plan on doing a joke like this every year, because people will continually fall for it."

A representative for Death Cab could not be reached for comment by presstime.