Mystery Project Shone Leads Fans On Scavenger Hunt, New Song Found

Earlier this month, several rock artists Tweeted links to http://www.heatthing.com/, including Vinnie Caruana, Kevin Devine, and eventually John Nolan, Thrice, and Manchester Orchestra. The website has been updating videos at its page on a regular basis between midnight and one AM Eastern time, leading fans to speculate on what the page was actually for. The website is called Heat Thing, but it speaks of Shone on the website – but more on this part of the mystery later.

It has a mailing list – not just digital, but also asking for your home address. It gives a return address, which fans realized was for Brian Lane, famed drummer for Brand New. Several fans speculated Shone or Heat Thing would be the title of an upcoming Brand New album. As people more intensely looked into it, someone noticed and our friends over at PropertyOfZack reported is likely a side project with Brian Lane from Brand New and Andrew Accardi from Robbers; you can listen to the song streaming it here after the break.

After the mailing list sign up, select fans in the Long Island area have been sent out letters giving clues as to its greater meaning. The sleuths of the group spotted images and craft work on Tumblr and other websites working on this project as early January 2011, almost two years ago. A full explanation of the early activity is available on our friend Keagan Ilvonen’s blog here. As recently as this week, Shone (or whoever) sent out physical letters; in the past few days, a second wave of letters has begun, guiding fans to specific locations.

Today at one of those physical locations, a USB was found labeled “Piano Wire Number 12”. It had this song on it, that the lucky fan who found it was kind enough to upload for us:

It appears that this is a music project featuring, at the very least, Brian Lane and Andrew Accardi. To us, it sounds pretty awesome, and this is certainly one of the most in-depth viral campaigns we’ve ever heard of. We’ll keep you posted on the mystery as much as we can, but the real action is over at AbsolutePunk, where the thread following Shone is on track to break the forum’s record for most replied and most viewed post. Join in the fray here.

Dan Bogosian
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