Jacob Thiele, Former Keyboardist of the Faint, Dead at 40

Jacob Thiele, formerly the keyboardist for the Faint, has died, the Omaha World-Herald reports. “We are devastated to lose our dear friend Jacob Thiele,” his former bandmates wrote on social media. “He was a true synthesizer pioneer, and the Faint would not have sounded the same without him. We were incredibly lucky to have had the time we did with him.”

Jacob Thiele was 40 years old. A cause of death has not been revealed.

Thiele joined the Faint at the end of 1998 and was both a recording and touring member of the band until his departure in 2016. He played on every album from 1999’s Blank-Wave Arcade through 2014’s Doom Abuse. In addition to his tenure in the Faint, Thiele performed along bandmates Todd Fink and Clark Baechle in the side project Depressed Buttons.