The Shins’ James Mercer and Danger Mouse also team up for new album

Just when you thought we had reached the pinnacle of collaborations with news of Ian Brown and Johnny Marr’s new venture, there’s this: According to Pitchfork, Shins frontman James Mercer has teamed up with Brian Joseph Burton, aka Danger Mouse of Dark Night of the Soul and Gnarls Barkley fame, for a brand new project tentatively called Broken Bells. Their debut album will be out sometime early next year via Columbia Records, and it will be apparently be the first of many — as Pitchfork notes, the duo is “in it for the long haul and already have plans extending past [its] first album.”