The band’s core members, Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer, have lined up club dates for an unplugged outing that begins July 29 at The Old Firehouse in Redmond, Wash., and ends September 3 at the Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle.

The duo is prepping an acoustic Posies album called In Case You Didn’t Feel Like Plugging In, and a box set of Posies rarities and outtakes called At Least, At Last is due in August.

The band formally split in 1997, and put a fine point on the its demise with a farewell tour and San Francisco send-off show. So what gives? Are the Posies back?

Yes and no, says Stringfellow.

“Much like a band may break up and reform to dive through the loopholes of a stifling contract, or a criminal may change identity to avoid resembling his post office portrait, the Posies needed to disband to avoid becoming self-parody,” Stringfellow explained in a statement.

“Of course, as soon as we attempted to do the honorable thing and carve the Posies’ headstone once and for all, interest in the Posies seemed to reach its greatest organic extent.”

Stringfellow told MTV News, “The live and recording rock band that was the Posies, featuring Jon and I and different bass players and drummers over the years, will highly unlikely ever become active again.

“On the other hand … Jon and I, being the founding and the only consistent members of the band over the years, are still doing stuff together; that would constitute us being … something,” Stringfellow added.

“Really, this is just a one-time tour for fun, but the rules could change anytime.”

Clear as mud?

What is clear is there’s an album and a tour. The outing will hit 24 cities, including Portland, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City. Julie Ritter, formerly of Mary’s Danish, supports August 8 – 11 and Shannon Wright opens August 22 – 26.