The Bird and the Bee Sides
extended play by Relient K

The Bird and the Bee Sides is a double EP by the American band Relient K. It was released on July 1, 2008. The double EP was released on a single disc, containing both The Nashville Tennis EP and The Bird and the Bee Sides. It was their last release under Gotee Records, as the group had fulfilled their contract with the label.
The collection debuted at No. 25 on the Billboard 200, selling 20,000 copies in its first week.
Background
The Bird and the Bee Sides was produced by Mark Lee Townsend and mixed by J.R. McNeely, recording at S-S-Studio in Spring Hill, Tennessee.
The Nashville Tennis EP (whose title is a pun on Nashville, Tennessee) includes 13 tracks of new material that allowed the band to explore their sound by channeling country and reggae influences, as well as feature compositions by band members other than Matt Thiessen and Matt Hoopes.
The Bird and the Bee Sides is a collection of rarities or unreleased demos from earlier in the band's career. Thiessen said that the release was to give the band "a little breathing room" before working on their next album.
Speaking about putting the collection together, Thiessen stated, "We were just trying to think of what our fans would want from a b-sides record [...] Along the way, the band decided to include some new tracks, a concept that quickly morphed into 'hey, why doesn't everybody in the band write a song?'."
Release
On May 30, 2008, Relient K announced the release date for The Bird and the Bee Sides and held an online scavenger hunt for tracks that were cut from the EP. The album artwork was also revealed that same day and the scavenger hunt ran from June 16 to June 30 on their MySpace page.
“The Bird and the Bee Sides” enters the record as extended play by Relient K. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Bird, Sides and extended can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3234365. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2008.
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