Mint

Mint came out of Hasselt, Belgium, in 1999, an art-leaning pop-rock band fronted by singer Erwin Marcisz, with Phil Marcisz and Tim Claes in the ranks. After a few singles they teamed with Australian producer Peter Crosbie for Echoes from the Engine Room, released in 2004 on the Brussels indie Green LFant Records, and took it to some of Belgium's biggest festivals, Dour, Marktrock and Pukkelpop, before it spread to the Netherlands, France and Switzerland the next year.

For the follow-up they headed to Richmond, Virginia, to work with producer John Morand. Magnetism came out in Belgium and the Netherlands in 2006, launched with a presentation at the King Baudouin Stadium in Brussels, and the American label Funzalo Records picked it up for the States. The titles alone tell you the band's sensibility: the wry "Your Shopping Lists Are Poetry", which climbed to the top of the most-requested list at the American alternative station WEQX, and the glittering "The Magnetism of Pure Gold", which made its mark on Dutch alternative station KinkFM.

That same year Mint made the Belgian papers for a different reason: Queen Fabiola got up and danced during their show at the Royal Palace of Laeken. Not many pop-rock bands can claim a royal on the dance floor.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.