Oklahoma’s festival finest, The Flaming Lips, recently graced Australian shores to help ring in the New Year’s for punters lucky enough to attend the Falls Festival for its 20th and 10th anniversary showings in Lorne and Marion Bay respectively. Just a few short days after, and over in Busselton, WA however, fans weren’t so grateful.

The Flaming Lips were the headline act for the first night of Western Australia’s Southbound Festival 2013, following on from sets from the likes of Swedish rock gods The Hives, Sydney folkies Boy & Bear, and electro heroes Hot Chip on the Sunny Stage.

Shortly after concluding another typically colourful set however, one of The Flaming Lips’ more distinct stage props – frontman Wayne Coyne’s pair of giant hands that shoot forth lasers – was stolen from the group. Some time after the performance, a distressed crew took to Twitter to urge fans to keep an eye out for the signature prop.

Southbound promoters also offered VIP tickets to next year’s event as a reward to anyone able to recover the laser hands, adding that: “We’ve heard whispers from the campsite, so someone knows about it!”

Luckily Coyne and co. weren’t permanently separated from their novelty mitts, with reports coming in early yesterday morning from the band that the laser hands had been found, relatively unharmed.

Southbound later confirmed their successful return on their Facebook page, complete with an image of the unique prop looking a little worse for wear; writing they had been “stolen by some dork, and dumped unceremoniously in a nearby paddock, they have been located by our site crew and are intact and on their way back to the band.”

No details have emerged from either the Flaming Lips or Southbound camps as to how the perpetrators made off with such an item from backstage security (or if the thieves in question will be punished with a slap on the behind with the novelty hands), but needless to say, Coyne and The Lips are relieved, with the frontman taking to Twitter:

It’s a particularly strange start to the year for the Flaming Lips, but considering the band’s equally busy and bizarre 2012, it’s seems fitting.

The last twelve months have seen the band featuring in a radio play called Wayne Coyne’s Human Head-Shaped Tumour, celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the band’s landmark 2002 album Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, produced a musical based on the record, and put together a few all-star collaborations – including The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends album and  reworking King Crimson’s debut with a bunch of psychedellically minded musicians.

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