James Mercer and Brian Burton a/k/a Danger Mouse, collectively known as Broken Bells, will issue a four-song EP titled Meyrin Fields on March 29, 2011. The EP features the previously unreleased tracks “Windows” and “Heartless Empire,” as well as “An Easy Life” and the title track. Meyrin Fields will be available a little over a year from the March 2010 release of Broken Bells’Grammy-nominated self-titled debut, and will be issued in vinyl, CD, softpack and digital formats.
Meyrin Fields is available for pre-order now at Brokenbells.com. NPR will premiere the track “Windows” beginning March 7 .
Broken Bells’ self titled debut album has sold over 300,000 copies domestically since its March 9, 2010 Columbia Records release, nearly 50,000 of which were moved in its first week—landing the record at #7 on the Billboard 200. In addition to being 2010’s highest charting debut album by an alternative/rock band, Broken Bells met with a unanimously positive critical reception: Rolling Stone hailed the album as “the year’s coolest left field pop disc” in a 4-star lead review, while Wired described it as “crazy good stuff” and Entertainment Weekly praised it as a “subtly savory sonic morsel.” More recently, Broken Bells came in at #5 in NPR’s 2010 year-end listeners poll.
Broken Bells’ genesis can be traced back to longtime mutual fans Burton and Mercer first face to face meeting at the 2004 Roskilde Festival in Copenhagen. The pair immediately hit it off and kept in touch until May 2008 when the finally seized the opportunity to finally collaborate on original music together. Meyrin Fields is the latest product of this amazing union, which will continue to record and tour together for the foreseeable future.