Alt-rockers Spoon [ tickets ] have lined up a few December dates ahead of the January release of the band's new studio album, "Transference."

The Austin, TX-based outfit will kick off the slate with a Dec. 3 appearance at a radio-station show in Kansas City, MO, and will close out 2009 with a New Year's Eve concert in Milwaukee, WI. Dates are below.

"Transference," the band's new self-produced studio effort, drops Jan. 26 on Merge Records. The 11-track album features the group's recent single, "Got Nuffin'," which surfaced in June.

"This is the first record we've ever made without a producer or a heavy of any kind, and I don't know for sure because I'll never hear this record in the same way that someone who didn't make it will, but I think you can tell it," frontman Britt Daniels wrote on the band's website.

"When I listen to it I think, hey, that's how I woulda done it!" Daniels added.

Spoon's previous full-length release, "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga," surfaced in July 2007 and peaked at No. 1 on Billboard's Top Independent Albums chart.