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Hanson, With An Orchestra? Hanson, With An Orchestra!

Hanson hit a bunch of major milestones last year: It marked its 25th anniversary as a band, as well as the 20th anniversary of its eternal hit "MMMBop," and it became the first (and, so far, only) artist ever to perform two Tiny Desk concerts in one day.

Now that it's officially in its second quarter-century — and, one hopes, long past having to remind people that it's been a terrific and criminally underrated band since the beginning — Hanson is attempting to one-up itself with the Nov. 9 release of a double-album called String Theory. The concept: Isaac, Taylor and Zac Hanson revisit their catalog, and perform new and/or previously unreleased songs, while backed by a symphony orchestra. (The pieces are arranged by Oscar winner and composer David Campbell, a.k.a. Beck's dad.)

The band will tour North America this fall — accompanied by an assortment of local orchestras, including the National Symphony Orchestra — but in the meantime, you can watch Hanson perform the simultaneously hooky and haunting "Siren Call" on this page.

String Theory comes out Nov. 9 via 3CG.

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Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)