One of my favorite bands, Deerhoof, has teamed up with innovative media company CASH Music (we’ve talked about CASH’s great work here, here, and here) for a very interesting project. In a sly nod to the ubiquity of pre-release music leaks, the group has issued the sheet music for its upcoming single “Fresh Born” under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license in advance of the October release of Offend Maggie, the band’s new album on Kill Rock Stars.

It’s a neat experiment in encouraging interactivity: Deerhoof’s recorded version of “Fresh Born” isn’t even available yet, but there are already several great recordings of the song – all made by other people – floating around online. Visit the CASH site for the most up-to-date collection of links to versions of the song. Lucas Gonze has made the music easier to work with digitally by retranscribing it with music notation software. Also, be sure to check out New York public radio station WNYC’s cool video of Deerhoof fans using their sight-reading abilities to collaboratively create a rendition of the song.