1. The band has run out of ideas for her. Outside of asking her to wear a leotard and hump a monitor (see Lykke Li), they have exhausted every other ironic auxiliary instrument—glockenspiel, Key-tar, alt-style French Horn. They should probably kick her out, but they like the fictional sexual mischief they have with her in their brains.
2. Because ironic auxiliary instruments were cool for six weeks in 2005, and this band believes we’re still in this era. Meg played xylophone for the White Stripes, the Decemberists asked some old sailor to play concertina on that whale song, and then there’s Jethro Tull’s catalog. This leads me to believe the band isn’t reading Spin—or way too much of it.
3. Because the lead singer is wearing a fedora. When he wears an Urban Outfitters fedora everyone else decided not to buy, he needs to distract the audience—thus the presence of the baffled broad playing accordion stage right.
4. Because Zooey Deschanel. I’m not certain whether Deschanel has played accordion, but it seems like something she would do if Ben Gibbs told her it was hot, so, my point remains. As the queen of feminine-vintage fetishism, she’s also squarely to blame for thrift store dresses, re-interest in Patsy Cline, and Holga cameras.
5. Because this girl’s grandfather just died and it was the one way she could remember her grandfather/join her small college town’s hip-new-indie-project without having to practice, learn guitar, and/or sing.
6. Because the band is actually comprised of theatre kids who think avant-garde visuals (though we discussed in #2 this is NOT) are as important as musical sounds. Except as evidenced by being theatre kids in bands, they’re afraid of full commitment and will never prove successful in either career direction leading them to years later tell kids in their small town community theatre project that they operate after getting off from work as a massage therapist that they once had an accordion in their trendy rock band and isn’t that cool?
7. For the same reason porn stars wear glasses.

-Dunstan McGill