Despite being in full-time promotional mode for their new and recently award-winning documentary, Artifact, Thirty Seconds To Mars’ drummer Shannon Leto carved out the time to produce and release one of the band’s most progressive remixes to date.

Leto envisioned “Night Of The Hunter,” one of the band’s most orchestrated singles from This Is War, as an entirely new, dance-able remix. Stepping outside his rock-rooted world, Leto explains, “I really wanted to reinvent it, to shed a different light on it by bringing a dance element to it.”

Speaking to Guitar Center about his passion for percussion and finding the just the right sound, Leto confesses “It took me ten days to get this one drum sound for (the original recording of) ‘Night of the Hunter.’ ‘There was a feeling that had to be present and the drums had to have this particular sound. I had the guys try different things over and over, and on the tenth day I finally nailed it.”

It’s no surprise that Leto would wander into the dance realm as the band’s famously sited Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails and The Cure as early influences – all of which straddled the line between rock and dance.

In 2011 the drummer co-hosted a series of intimate after-hour parties in Europe where he played live percussion as DJ Antione Becks spun modern electronic dance tracks.

“Night Of The Hunter” is available as a free download here.

– Jay Tilles, CBS Local