Technology magazine, Wired, is reporting that The Decemberists have embraced the popular BitTorrent peer-to-peer system to promote their music.

According to the story, the band and their video director were disappointed with the infrequent airings of their video for "16 Military Wives" on MTV2 and opted to release a high-quality version of the video via BitTorrent. According to the group, traditional online distribution of the videos fared no better with most music videos appearing in "postage-stamp-sized windows" with horrendous quality, in formats that are unsaveable.

The band has provided detailed instructions on use of the technology which is used for everything from the legal distribution of freely available products like Linux to music and movie copyright infringement and has been said to account for a third of online traffic. Paradoxically, BitTorrent's architecture means that the more popular the file is the faster it is downloaded.

You can find the instructions and direct links to smaller versions of the 70mb video here: "16 Military Wives"