The Shins

The Shins stand out in indie rock for their wistful blend of 1960s psychedelic pop, folk, and power pop, along with James Mercer's indirect yet deeply felt lyrics. Their 2001 debut Oh, Inverted World captured the buoyant romantic confusion of young adulthood and drew widespread praise, which only grew with the sleeker production on 2003's Chutes Too Narrow. A key placement in Zach Braff's 2004 breakout film Garden State propelled their popularity sharply upward, turning 2007's Wincing the Night Away into a Grammy-nominated U.S. Top Ten success. Mercer soon pursued a side project with producer and multi-instrumentalist Danger Mouse under the name Broken Bells, an experimental pair whose methods influenced the denser textures of the Shins' 2012 album Port of Morrow. Even while managing other endeavors, Mercer kept circling back to the band, and both 2017's Heartworms and its counterpart The Worm's Heart showed his ongoing commitment to refreshing vintage styles.

The group first took shape in 1996 as a side effort alongside Mercer's main band, Flake. Mercer had started Flake in 1992 alongside drummer Jesse Sandoval, keyboardist Marty Crandall, and bassist Neal Langford; the outfit later adopted the name Flake Music and put out several singles plus the well-received album When You Land Here, It's Time to Return.

Not long after that record appeared, Mercer and Sandoval launched the Shins to explore a different direction. With Mercer handling most of the songwriting, the new project took on a tighter, more deliberate sound shaped by the psychedelic pop of the Elephant 6 collective and the melodic craft of 1950s and '60s pop, in contrast to Flake Music's loose, group-written approach. Crandall joined, as did Scared of Chaka members Dave Hernandez and Ron Skrasek, though the latter two soon departed to focus on their primary band. By 1999 Flake Music had effectively ended, and Langford also came aboard the Shins.

After issuing a pair of 7"s on Omnibus—"Nature Bears a Vacuum" in 1998 and "When I Goose-Step" in 2000—the Shins toured with Modest Mouse. Sub Pop's Jonathan Poneman saw them in San Francisco and invited them to contribute a single to the label's Single of the Month Club, which led to a deal for "New Slang" and their first full-length, June 2001's Oh, Inverted World. The album's buoyant, nostalgic songs connected strongly with critics and listeners, eventually earning platinum certification from the RIAA in 2023 and becoming the third Sub Pop release to reach a million U.S. copies after Nirvana's Bleach and the Postal Service's Give Up. The Shins spent the remainder of 2001 on the road with Preston School of Industry and Red House Painters, while singles "Know Yr Onion!" and "The Past and the Pending" sustained momentum into 2002.

After relocating to Portland, Oregon, Mercer built a home studio where the Shins cut their follow-up with Hernandez back on bass. Released in October 2003, Chutes Too Narrow was mixed by Phil Ek and featured a cleaner, guitar-focused sound with broader songwriting range. The record sustained the band's critical standing while signaling commercial growth, entering the Billboard 200 at number 86 and later receiving gold certification from the RIAA. Their visibility surged when Braff placed several tracks in Garden State, after which sales of both Oh, Inverted World and Chutes Too Narrow doubled. That same year the band also appeared on an episode of Gilmore Girls in its fourth season.

For their third album the Shins worked at Mercer's home studio as well as with Ek and Joe Chiccarelli, an engineer Mercer encountered through the Portland lounge-pop outfit Pink Martini. Their more open recording sessions fed into the varied palette of January 2007's Wincing the Night Away, which drew from funk, hip-hop, Hawaiian folk, and synth pop. Moving over 100,000 copies in its opening week, the album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200—Sub Pop's highest chart entry at the time, surpassing the Afghan Whigs' 1996 Black Love, which peaked at number 79—and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Album while matching Chutes Too Narrow's gold status in the U.S.

Once touring wrapped, the Shins paused and Mercer began his partnership with producer and multi-instrumentalist Danger Mouse, also known as Brian Burton, as Broken Bells. Their self-titled 2010 debut reached the U.S. Top Ten and received a 2011 Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Album. When the Shins resurfaced with the Greg Kurstin-produced Port of Morrow in March 2012, Mercer's lineup included songwriters Jessica Dobson and Richard Swift, Modest Mouse drummer Joe Plummer, and Crystal Skulls' Yuuki Matthews. Issued on Mercer's own Aural Apothecary imprint, the album paired personal reflections with poised electronic arrangements and climbed to number three on the Billboard 200.

Although Mercer rejoined Danger Mouse for Broken Bells' 2014 album After the Disco, he stayed active with the Shins, contributing "So Now What" to the soundtrack of Braff's 2014 film Wish I Was Here. That year also brought a reissue of Flake Music's When You Land Here, It's Time to Return. In 2016 the Shins covered the Beatles' "The Word" for the Netflix series Beat Bugs and released "Dead Alive," the lead single from their fifth album, March 2017's Heartworms. Mercer produced the record himself as a deliberate nod to the band's early style, and it reached number 20 on the Billboard 200. The following January they issued The Worms Heart, a rearranged version of Heartworms that flipped the track order and swapped the tempos of its songs. In 2019 they put out "Waimanalo" and "Trapped by the Sea" as tributes to former member Swift, who had passed away in 2018. A standalone single, "The Great Divide," surfaced in September 2020. The next April marked the 20th-anniversary edition of Oh, Inverted World, which the band performed in full on their 2022 tour. In October 2023 the 20th-anniversary edition of Chutes Too Narrow arrived, newly remastered by Adam Ayan with custom die-cut artwork.