He may have found fame by appealing to the potty-training set, but Steve Burns is now taking his reinvented indie rock self on a tour of nightclubs across the western states.

The former "Blues Clues" host will be supporting his debut album, Songs For Dustmites, which is released on August 12 through PIAS records.

He certainly hasn't gone it alone since leaving the Nickelodeon staple years ago. The album was largely helmed by master producer Dave Fridmann of Flaming Lips/Mercury Rev fame and the Lips' Steven Drozd contributed heavily. The band's Michael Ivins engineered some of the songs, according to Burns' Web site, steveswebpage.com.

The resulting CD, 12 songs about "science and love," sounds an awful lot like a Flaming Lips album, but, perhaps due to the absence of Wayne Coyne, has a firmer footing on the ground.

For the tour, which begins August 15 in Houston and ends two weeks and a day later in Denver, Burns has enlisted the help of that other kooky band from Oklahoma - The Starlight Mints. The outing will make the requisite stops in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle in Portland along the way.