Norah Jones

Norah Jones is set to release a new album this spring entitled Little Broken Hearts (Blue Note/EMI), a collaboration with the producer and musician Danger Mouse. With all songs co-written by the two, and all instrumental duties split between them, the album is, in essence, a duet album by the Grammy Award-winning singer and the hottest musician/producer in contemporary music.

The two first worked together when Danger Mouse called upon Jones to contribute vocals to his acclaimed 2011 album ROME, and their connection proved deep enough that they decided to collaborate on Jones’ fifth studio album.

Little Broken Hearts, which features original songs co-written by Jones and Danger Mouse, is the fascinating next step in the artistic evolution of one of the most intriguing singers to have emerged in the past decade. Together they have married their highly personal styles to create an entirely new sound.

Jones’s singular voice caught the attention of Danger Mouse – currently hot with the success of the Black Keys’ El Camino, which he produced and played on – as he began to conceptualize ROME, his homage to classic Italian film score music. He already had Jack White in mind for the male role, and he and his collaborator Daniele Luppi realized that Jones’s voice would give the project the perfect balance it needed. Jones contributed three standout songs to ROME (check out a stripped-down live acoustic version of “Black” on www.RollingStone.com) and around the same time she and Danger Mouse began working on some of the material that would eventually become Little Broken Hearts.

The duo reconvened in Danger Mouse’s Los Angeles studio this past fall to finish what they had begun. The songs were all built from the ground up in the studio, with Jones and Danger Mouse sharing all the songwriting credits and performing the majority of the instrumental parts; Jones on piano, keyboards, bass, and guitar, and Danger Mouse — who is one half of Gnarls Barkley and Broken Bells and the wizard/producer behind Gorillaz — contributing drums, bass, guitar, keyboards, and string arrangements.

Jones will tour extensively in 2012, performing at a mixture of festivals, amphitheatres and theatres in the U.S. and abroad, including her return to the Hollywood Bowl, which has been announced as part of the venue’s subscriber series. The nine-time Grammy Award-winning singer will be appearing at the iconic outdoor amphitheatre in Los Angeles on August 10.

Jones will also perform at the Kodak Hall at Eastman Theater in Rochester, N.Y., on June 29. Many more dates will be announced in the coming months.