There is no debating that Death Cab for Cutie, which will take the stage at the Bryce Jordan Center tonight, is a hard-working band.

Ben Gibbard, frontman for both Death Cab and the Postal Service, pumps out music faster than a record player gone haywire. Guitarist Chris Walla contributes to the Postal Service while juggling numerous production duties for other indie rock acts. Drummer Jason McGerr is a drum instructor in Seattle.

Amid the chaos of his band mates, bassist Nick Harmer talked about his own side projects, the band's new DVD, and of course, David Hasselhoff.

Kevin Doran: You were born in Germany?

Nick Harmer: That's correct.

KD: Does that mean you're a huge David Hasselhoff fan?

NH: (laughs) No, I was born in Germany. I'm not a German citizen, so I don't know if I possess the Hasselhoff gene or not. I did like Knight Rider a lot when I was a kid, though, so it's hard to say.

KD: How long did you live in Germany before you came here?

NH: I was an army brat, so I lived there for a couple years after I was born, then we moved back to the States.

KD: How long did you know all the guys before the band got started?

NH: I knew Ben [Gibbard] for a few years. We were college roommates. We knew all these musician guys in town, and I'd known Chris [Walla] through that same pipeline. Then when it came time for them to find a bass player, I'd been friends with Ben for years and we'd always talked about being in a band together and he said, "Hey, you want to play?" and I said "Sure."

KD: How do you keep yourself busy when Ben and Chris are off doing their side projects?

NH: I do a lot of extra stuff on the side with film and video, and I do a lot of writing. With my friend Aaron [Stewart-Ahn], we produced the Directions DVD that we put out earlier this year. We produced a video for the Decemberists for a song called "Sixteen Military Wives."

KD: How did you guys come up with the idea to put out a whole DVD full of stuff like that?

NH: I was going to produce and Aaron was going to direct. We were going to make a video for one song on the record that was a non-single, for fun, and put it up online and call it good. Talking to people at Atlantic, I said "Hey, can I, with my own time and money, make a video for some random song on the record?" and they said "Yeah, we wouldn't mind if you made a video for every song on the record." And that got my brain turning, and so Aaron and I started batting ideas back and forth. It was just, let's have some friends of ours who are really talented directors, and let's see if they'd be interested in making a video that we would put online. It was only when videos started coming in that we realized how consistently awesome they were. We thought maybe we should think of putting these out on a DVD and not online, which were downsized and squashed for streaming. So then it took off from there.

KD: Do you think that could be a new direction for music?

NH: I think music videos are always going to be interesting companions to the music, but I certainly wouldn't want them to become inseparable from it. I like the idea that there's not one definitive version of a song. I think it would be a little detrimental to the music if music always was released with a visual companion to it, thereby forcing people to think about the song a specific way every time.

KD: If you were any Beatle, which one would you be?

NH: George [Harrison] was the rock, in the middle there and solid, and that's how I like to be.

KD: Is that how you see yourself?

NH: Yeah, sometimes. I like to think of myself as a Chewbacca in this band. I'm not a Han Solo, I'm not a Luke Skywalker, I'm a Chewbacca. I'm there for support and for backup, for sure, but I'm certainly not leading the charge.

KD: What bands growing up made you decide you wanted to be in a rock band?

NH: I think probably listening to Pixies was when I thought, "I want that life, I want to be able to do that." When I was in junior high and my friend's older sister passed down the Surfer Rosa tape, I was like, "Holy crap. This is it." I think my thinking about [music] changed when I came across that band and realized, "I can do that."