Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin

The death of sotted statesman Boris Yeltsin sent a shockwave through the hearts of so many that he touched, not the least of which was power pop combo and recent Polyvinyl signees Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin. They were just another indie rock band with a quirky name until their Russian namesake went to the big dacha in the sky today.

"I feel really awkward," frontman Philip Dickey tells Radar. "This is the busiest my phone and e-mail have ever been in my life." The singer/songwriter says he and his bandmates struck upon the moniker when they were in high school and never got around to changing it. "We'd always be on the way to shows brainstorming new band names, saying, 'This is so lame. We've got to come up with something.' Somehow we didn't come up with anything we all liked," Dickey says.

So how do people feel about the suddenly tasteless handle? "We had this national release in October. I don't blame people if they suspect that this is just us wanting attention," muses Dickey. Still, he says, responses have been largely positive.

But will this finally be the impetus for changing the name? "We have a lot of younger people at our shows these days who don't even know who Yeltsin is," Dickey sighs, "but we're kind of locked in at this point. If we tried to change it we might come up with something worse."