...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead is a band that formed in 1994 by Jason Reece and Conrad Keely. Reece and Keely had been friends since a young age, meeting originally in Hawaii. In pursuit of a better punk-rock scene the two migrated to Olympia, Washington, still a hot indie-rock city riding the post-grunge wave. Reece fronted the band Mukilteo Fairies while living here. Dissatisfied with the northwest, the two ventured south to Austin, Texas and started playing as a duo under the moniker 'You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead' with Jason and Conrad trading off duties on vocals/guitar/drums. Soon, they picked up guitarist Kevin Allen and bassist Neil Busch and changed their name to '...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead' (adding the conjunction and then the ellipses for effect).
By 1998 they had issued their first release (a live cassette on local Golden Hour Records), a self-titled full-length on Trance Syndicate, and a fast-growing reputation for an incendiary, destructive live show.
...Trail of Dead moved on to Merge after the closing of Trance's doors, issuing Madonna in the fall of 1999.
Following the critical success of Madonna and their growing notoriety for destruction, the band was picked up by major-label Interscope Records after Jimmy Iovine, president of Interscope, read about them in a magazine. They quickly released the Relative Ways EP in 2001, building anticipation for their upcoming full-length release the following year.
In early 2002, ...Trail of Dead released Source Tags & Codes to immediate critical acclaim, and made numerous critics' year-end top 10 lists.
A follow-up EP to Source Tags was released in April of 2003, titled The Secret of Elena's Tomb. The EP took some by surprise for some of its more adventurous and experimental songs, namely the electronic track "Intelligence" which was pulled from Reece's side-project A Roman Scandal.
