Right now, the Shins -- at least in their James Mercer-plus-whoever incarnation -- are preparing to return to the world with the new album Port Of Morrow. The new joints "Simple Song" and "September"…   Read Story »

Portlandia's already been good for unexpected cameos (Aimee Mann, Steve Buscemi, Aubrey Plaza, plus many others). And it looks lik Portlandia is upping the number of musical cameos. Next week Colin…   Read Story »

This Broken Bells video is in 3D! Maybe now their music will take some shape? Broken Bells -- the better-on-paper team-up of James Mercer, a man otherwise capable of mainlining melodies into my…   Read Story »

Last week we mentioned Dirty Projectors's Dylan cover as part of the Levi's Pioneer Sessions. The Shins's James Mercer stopped by Levi's to produce this cover of Squeeze's "Goodbye Girl" (from their…   Read Story »

Christina Hendricks (star of this Everclear video and Joan on Mad Men) stars in this sci-fi video for "Ghost Inside," while the band make a short cameo at the end. James Mercer and Brian Burton are…   Read Story »

We saw a bunch of bands this past week. Not every set was memorable, but there were more than enough highlights to make the stiff necks and barking feet worth it. Here's Wednesday, Thursday,…   Read Story »

Broken Bells started their promotional tour for their self-titled debut a little less than a month ago, and it'll wrap up at SXSW this weekend, when the supergroup-of-sorts will play about five sets…   Read Story »

Danger Mouse and James Mercer hit-up The Road for "The High Road" video. Now they've actually taken Broken Bells to the streets: The guys performed their debut show Friday 2/19 at the Bootleg Theater…   Read Story »

Not sure if musicians and comedians preternaturally get along together. But they definitely both hate cancer. So maybe this benefit for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society was more of a…   Read Story »

By now, even after that sneaky promo campaign, you may know Broken Bells is the post-Dark Night Of The Soul collision of Danger Mouse and Starbucks sweetheart James Mercer. The twosome now have a…   Read Story »