Narrow Stairs is the sixth studio album by indie rock band Death Cab for Cutie, released on May 12, 2008, in the United Kingdom and on May 13, 2008, in the United States, on Atlantic and Barsuk Records.

Four singles were released for the album: "I Will Possess Your Heart", "Cath...", "No Sunlight", and "Grapevine Fires". "I Will Possess Your Heart" reached number six on the US Alternative Songs chart, was named iTunes UK song of the year 2008, and was nominated for the 2009 Grammy Award for Best Rock Song. "Cath..." and "Grapevine Fires", also reached number ten and number twenty-one on the US Alternative Songs chart, respectively.

Narrow Stairs reached number one on the Billboard 200, making it Death Cab for Cutie's highest charting album to-date.

In October 2007, producer and guitarist Chris Walla said that Death Cab for Cutie's new album "is in full swing; we're six songs in." He went on to say, "thus far it's pretty weird and pretty spectacular; lots of blood. It's creepy and heavy... we've got a ten minute long Can jam, and had you suggested that possibility to me in 1998, I'd have eaten your puppy's brain with a spoon." In a Billboard piece, Walla described the album: "It's really weird. It's really, really good, I think, but it's totally a curve ball, and I think it's gonna be a really polarizing record. But I'm really excited about it. It's really got some teeth. The landscape of the thing is way, way more lunar than the urban meadow sort of thing that has been happening for the last couple of records." Walla went on to say, "[It's also] louder and more dissonant and [...] I think abrasive would be a good word to use. [We were influenced by] heavy, sludgy, slow metal [and] synth-punk band Brainiac." Ben Gibbard, lead singer and writer, commented, "I just don't feel like we really have anything to prove of it other than to ourselves and to making a record we really enjoy."

In 2011 Walla stated, "the master plan for Narrow Stairs was to be as invisible and hands-off as a producer as I possibly could. I was really interested in seeing what would happen. When we started that record, we had been on tour for the better part of two years. All we could remember was being on stage and playing. So the whole idea was: what happens if we’re just on stage and we play, except we’re in the studio and we’re recording?" Walla added "Narrow Stairs was very much a commitment to just crashing through the songs as we recorded them, like four people in a room."

While promoting the band's subsequent album, Codes and Keys (2011), Benjamin Gibbard reflected upon Narrow Stairs' lyrical content, stating, "That record is kind of a fulcrum in my life. So much of the negativity in my life got funneled into it. I realized after that I didn't want to go any darker. I wanted it to be the bottom for this band and my own emotional spectrum in terms of writing. I had no grandiose plans to turn my life around."

Several of the songs have literary or cultural themes, for example "Grapevine Fires" appears to be centered on the wildfires that raged in California during the summer and fall of 2007.

"Bixby Canyon Bridge" features many references to writer Jack Kerouac, whom Ben Gibbard often notes as a favorite author in interviews, and the song was written during a trip to Big Sur, the location of Bixby Creek Bridge. Gibbard has written lyrics referencing Kerouac before, including the songs "Lowell, MA" and "Title Track" from Death Cab for Cutie's 2000 album, We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes, and his contribution of lyrics and vocals to a song by Styrofoam titled "Couches in Alleys".