V2/Cooperative Music release "Keep It Hid", the solo debut from singer / songwriter / guitarist Dan Auerbach, best known as one half of The Black Keys, on 9th February 2009. While working on and touring in support of The Black Keys' most recent album, "Attack & Release", Auerbach was also writing songs that would become "Keep It Hid". "This record is a mixture of things I like to listen to... psychedelia, soul music, country harmonies", says Auerbach. In February Auerbach begins a US tour with performances in New York City, Boston, and Washington DC. The opening act for the tour will be the Hacienda, a band that will be doubling as Auerbach's backing band. UK dates will follow soon after...

"Keep It Hid" was recorded and engineered by Auerbach at his studio Akron Analog and features him playing a variety of instruments, including drums, guitar, percussion, and keyboards. Many of Auerbach's friends and family play on the album, including his uncle James Quine, who contributes vocal harmony and electric guitar on the track "Street Walkin." Other musicians include fellow Ohioans Jessica Lea Mayfield, who sings on the track "When the Night Comes," and Bob Cesare, who plays drums on "Whispered Words," a song originally written by Auerbach's father. Of the recording process Auerbach states, "I wanted a live, organic sound. Nothing was too plotted or planned, just a lot of spontaneity." The record was mixed by Auerbach's good friend Mark Neill at Neill's Soil of the South studio.

With his Black Keys bandmate Patrick Carney, Auerbach has recorded five full length albums culminating in 2008's "Attack & Release", the band's most commercially successful and critically acclaimed album to date. MOJO called it "the best album of their career so far", while in a 5 Star review, Observer Music Monthly stated that "Attack and Release isn't just the best Black Keys album thus far. Its the best authentic trad-rock album in years". Auerbach also has been busy with his own record label, Polymer Sounds, for which he produced the 2008 debut from Jessica Lea Mayfield, "With Blasphemy, So Heartfelt"; Pitchfork praised Mayfield's album as "fascinating and endlessly listenable." In other good news for fans of The Black Keys, V2/Cooperative Music are releasing a deluxe edition of "Attack and Release" which includes a bonus live DVD directed by Lance Bangs of the band's sell-out concert at the Crystal Ballroom in Portland.