But after the record came out, the two band members started dabbling in all sorts of side projects like their rap-rock project Blakroc, Dan Auerbach’s solo album, and Patrick Carney’s band Drummer.  It seemed like it would be a long time before we heard them together again in The Black Keys.

Thankfully, that’s not the case.  And we will actually get to hear new Black Keys music much sooner than I ever anticipated.  How soon?  Well the band announced that their sixth album, Brothers, will be released on May 18th.

This time, however, Danger Mouse is only producing one track, “Tighten Up.”  Carney and Auerbach will be handling most of the other production work themselves.  So it will be interesting to see whether they can carry over the same magic from Attack & Release without a heavy Danger Mouse influence.  Personally, I think they can.

Perhaps the coolest bit of news about this new album is that there will be a cover of Jerry Butler’s “Never Give You Up” (as opposed to Rick Astley’s more famous “Never Gonna Give You Up”, although a cover of that would be awesome as well.)

They chose a great album cover too:

Full track list after the jump.

01 Everlasting Light
02 Next Girl
03 Tighten Up
04 Howlin‘ for You
05 She’s Long Gone
06 Black Mud
07 The Only One
08 Too Afraid to Love You
09 Ten Cent Pistol
10 Sinister Kid
11 The Go Getter
12 I’m Not the One
13 Unknown Brother
14 Never Gonna Give You Up
15 These Days

-Sam