Vegas rockers Imagine Dragons celebrating CD release

To hear Dan Reynolds tell it, he and has bandmates have spent much of the past three years sleeping on floors and subsisting largely on Del Taco, if that really qualifies as subsistence.

And so Vegas-born rockers Imagine Dragons should have been eager to lunge for the gold ring that is a major label record deal (at least in theory).

Not so, the singer says.

"My biggest fear was always that you never really want to sell out, you never really want to sign to a label," Reynolds notes. "We had offers before and we turned them down and thought, 'We want to be on our own; we never want to give up our artistic integrity.' But then we met the right people, who didn't want to change the band and just wanted to do it on a bigger scale. It just felt right."

The people Reynolds is speaking of are the suits at Interscope Records, who signed the band and recently issued their latest EP, "Continued Silence," the groups' fourth overall.

"Silence" builds on the Dragons' climactic, dance floor-worthy swagger, with supersized, arms-in-the-air choruses and a buoyant groove amplified by the introduction of sub-hip-hop beats, which Reynolds says was heightened by working with producer Alex Da Kid, who's collaborated with the likes of Eminem and Rihanna.

"We had been moving to this direction of wanting to fuse almost urban-sounding beats with rock music," Reynolds says. "Then when we had Alex Da Kid reach out to us, he came into the studio and we wrote together and really hit it off. His vision was the exact same as our vision."

Now comes the roadwork.

Reynolds estimates that Imagine Dragons, who have relocated to Los Angeles, will play 60 to 70 shows in the next 2½ months, including partaking in a national tour.

But first, the band will be playing a CD release show at the Hard Rock Cafe today.

It's fitting that it will all begin where the band did.

"This show in Vegas has been a long time coming. Vegas is home for us," Reynolds says. "We'd be nothing if wasn't for how much the people in Vegas really accepted us."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.