In late February 2006, the band made a 15-second clip of "World Wide Suicide" available on the Internet, which was then played on numerous North American radio stations. The snippet revealed a hard-rocking sound with a noted return to the dominant vocal styles of Vedder's earlier work. It was first played on US radio on March 3, 2006 on KNDD (Seattle). On March 6, 2006, "World Wide Suicide" was made available via the band's official website to download for free. It was released to radio airplay on March 7, 2006. Between then and March 12, 2006, it was played over 1900 times on modern rock stations in the United States, meaning that it was one of the fastest-growing alternative rock songs of 2006 in the US. The single was made available commercially to digital music stores on March 14, 2006 accompanied by the B-side "Unemployable", also from the new album.