Dan Auerbach, co-founder, guitarist, and vocalist for The Black Keys and murder enthusiast, is lending his musical talents to a soundtrack for a comic book. Auerbach is working with writer Gabe Soria on a set of songs that are meant to accompany the “doom-laden country blues” of Murder Ballads, Soria’s new comic with artist Paul Reinwand. The comic follows a record label owner who stumbles onto two musically gifted siblings, and then some murder happens (is what we assume, given the title). Auerbach is taking his cues on the music from Soria, who describes it as “northern Mississippi music,” a regional style well known for its tinges of murder-laden doom.
Providing musical accompaniment for a comic book isn’t an entirely novel idea; Warren Ellis’ Nextwave: Agents Of H.A.T.E. had a theme song that captured its anarchic tone pretty well, for example. We’ll have to wait for Auerbach to release the as-yet-unmixed Murder Ballads soundtrack—which he describes as being “shorter than a double LP and longer than eight minutes”—to see if it contains quite as many references to “mean mama-jamas” or “Shakespeare, but with lots more punching.”