Broken Bells is an American indie rock band featuring artist–producer Brian Burton (better known as Danger Mouse) and James Mercer, the lead vocalist and guitarist for the Portland indie rock band The Shins. The project was first announced on Tuesday, September 29, 2009. The pair decided to work together after meeting at the Roskilde Festival, a Danish music festival, in 2004 and finding they were fans of each other's work. It took four more years before the two started working together and by March 2008 Mercer and Burton began recording together in secret at Burton's Los Angeles-based studio. The two describe their material as "melodic, but experimental, too".

On December 14 the band released their first email update, in which a binary-coded message stating 'The High Road is hard to find' was displayed, offering a link to the band's web page, now with a new color scheme, for 'further details'. On the morning of December 21, the band informed fans in an e-mail message of the release of their debut single "The High Road", which was made available as a free download on their official site. The self-titled debut album was released in the U.S. and Canada on March 9, 2010. Another version of the album was released as well which is designed to be a music box that plays a song when opened called "The Overture" which is not on the album.