Sub Pop Records will celebrate its 20th birthday with a July 12-13 party at Seattle's Marymoor Park, featuring performances by bands from throughout the indie label's storied past and present.

Among the groups reuniting or breaking long hiatuses for the occasion are Green River, Red Red Meat, the Fluid, Beachwood Sparks and Seaweed. Current label acts confirmed to appear include Fleet Foxes, Flight of the Conchords, Foals, Grand Archives, the Helio Sequence, Iron & Wine, Kinski, Low, Mudhoney, No Age, Wolf Parade, Pissed Jeans and the Ruby Suns.

Additional bands will be added to the bill, tickets for which go on sale April 26. As an adjunct to the music, a comedy night will be held July 11 at the Moore Theatre, featuring Patton Oswalt, Eugene Mirman, Todd Barry and other guests.

"I think the next Pornographers record will be fairly rock," says Newman. "I think with 'Challengers,' we moved as far in this direction as we can go, unless we turn into M. Ward or something. The songs I find myself writing these days are a little bit more rock, but that's as far as I can say."

Newman, who says he hopes to have demos ready for band consumption by the end of the year for a possible 2009 street date, is also writing material for a solo album, which in a perfect world would be released this fall. As far as what differentiates a solo song from a New Pornographers' song, that answer isn't clear-cut.

"That's the confusing part," Newman says. "In a lot of ways they're similar, but in a lot of obvious ways, they're not similar. The Pornographers have all of these different people in the band and different voices, which makes a big difference. On my own records, I'm kind of left to my own devices. That can be both good and bad."