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Bon Iver maps summer dates

Indie-folk singer/songwriter Justin Vernon's Bon Iver has lined up a slate of early summer dates as the band continues to support its critically acclaimed debut album.

The group--currently a trio that also features Mike Noyce and Sean Carey--kicks off a brief tour June 6 in Birmingham, AL, leading up to an appearance at the June 12-14 Bonnaroo Festival in Manchester, TN. Details are included below.

Bon Iver is also scheduled to make a few appearances later this summer on the European festival circuit. The overseas itinerary can be found at the band's website.

The group continues to support its debut album, last year's "For Emma, Forever Ago," which became a common sight on critics' year-end "best albums" lists. Originally self-released by the band in late 2007, "For Emma, Forever Ago" was eventually picked up for wider release by the Jagjaguwar label in February of last year.

Vernon, the band's mastermind, wrote the album during a voluntary exile following his breakup with Wisconsin quartet DeYarmond Edison in 2006. He spent three winter months alone in a log cabin in northeast Wisconsin, living off the land, splitting wood and hunting for food. Though writing music wasn't his plan, the solitude began feeding his creativity.

"I just started playing the guitar and humming melodies and sounds that eventually turned into words," Vernon explained in Bon Iver's bio. "I didn't even really know where it was going. I was going back and finding amazing things that meant something to me using that process. I was able to access deeper, darker and even happier shit just by this sort of subconscious way of doing it."

A couple of tracks from "For Emma, Forever Ago" are streaming at Bon Iver's MySpace page.