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The Shins are an American indie rock band founded and fronted by vocalist and multiinstrumentalist, James Mercer. The Shins were formed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but are now based in Portland, Oregon.

The Shins began in 1996 as a side project for singer/songwriter James Mercer, whose primary band was Flake Music in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Mercer formed Flake Music in 1992 with Neal Langford on guitar, Phil Higgs and then Marty Crandall on bass, and Jesse Sandoval on drums. During the next 5 years Flake Music released several singles, a full-length album, and began touring largely due to the help of other bands like Modest Mouse.

At a San Francisco performance with Modest Mouse in 2000, Sub Pop's Jonathan Poneman asked The Shins to contribute a single to the label's Single of the Month Club, which eventually became an offer to release The Shins' 2001 single, "New Slang," and their debut album, "Oh, Inverted World." The group spent the rest of the year touring. The release of singles such as "Know Your Onion!" and "The Past and Pending" kept The Shins' success going into 2002, cementing "Oh, Inverted World" as one of the definitive indie-rock albums of the early '00s and The Shins as one of the genre's leading younger bands. It received critical acclaim for its lyrically deft and jangly pop sound. The song "One By One All Day" was featured in the 2003 film A Guy Thing, starring Jason Lee. Two other songs from this album, ("Caring Is Creepy" and "New Slang") were featured prominently on the soundtrack for the 2004 film Garden State, starring and directed by Zach Braff, exposing the music of The Shins to a much wider audience. Their music was also featured in the television series The OC, the film The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and they performed on an episode of Gilmore Girls. "Oh, Inverted World" appeared at #71 on Pitchfork Media's Top 100 Albums of 2000–2004.

The band relocated from Albuquerque to Portland, OR in 2001. Mercer, Sandoval and Crandall made the move. Neal Langford decided to leave the band, staying in Albuquerque so he could continue with another of his passions, professional hot air ballooning. Dave Hernandez (at this point living in nearby Seattle) rejoined The Shins in 2003 playing guitar and bass. The band began tracking new material in Mercer's basement that summer. In an effort to balance the home recording method used on "Oh, Inverted World" with a studio finish, producer Phil Ek (Built To Spill, Modest Mouse) was brought in to mix and produce the album. "Chutes Too Narrow" was released by Sub Pop in the fall of 2003 to much fanfare in indie music circles, featuring even more multi-layered lyrics, as well as a musical approach that explored new genres, song structures, and levels of production fidelity. In 2006, the band helped to curate an edition of the British All Tomorrow's Parties festival. Nonstop touring of everywhere from Australia to Norway, as well as the US countless times over contributed to pushing sales past 500,000 worldwide, exceeding everyone's expectations, including the band's. "Chutes Too Narrow" appeared at #47 on Pitchfork Media's Top 100 Albums of 2000–2004.

In a Pitchfork Media interview, Mercer announced that Eric Johnson of fellow Sub Pop band Fruit Bats had joined The Shins. The band's third album, "Wincing the Night Away," was recorded in Portland during 2006 by a largely solo Mercer, but with the production assistance of Joe Chiccarelli. It was released on January 23, 2007 and debuted at number 2 on the Billboard 200 album chart with 118,000 copies sold in its first week, the highest sales week and chart position an album released solely on Sub Pop has ever achieved. The album was leaked to the Internet on October 20, 2006 and was available for pre-order on iTunes, with an extra track. It was nominated for a 2008 Grammy award in the category of Best Alternative Music Album.

Port of Morrow is the fourth studio album by The Shins, released on March 20, 2012 on Aural Apothecary and Columbia Records. Co-produced by Greg Kurstin and frontman James Mercer, it is the band’s first studio album in five years, following the release of 2007’s Wincing the Night Away, and their first since the departure of founding members Dave Hernandez (bass, guitar), Marty Crandall (keyboards) and Jesse Sandoval (drums).

Primarily a collaboration between Mercer and Kurstin, the album features contributions from former members, Dave Hernandez, Marty Crandall, Eric D. Johnson and Ron Lewis, alongside current drummer Joe Plummer, and other studio contributors including Janet Weiss and Nik Freitas. The album has a more slick and polished sound than the band’s previous efforts, with a much greater emphasis on electronic instrumentation while still retaining elements of the melodic indie pop style the band originally made their name with.

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