NERD, the group that launched the career of Pharrell Williams into the mainstream, have announced details of their first new batch of songs in almost five years.

Perhaps inspired by the momentous success of Pharrell’s Despicable Me 2 single, Happy, NERD have chosen to mark their comeback with an affiliation with animated soundtrack: Williams, Chad Hugo and Shae Haley will contribute music to the forthcoming SpongeBob SquarePants film, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.

NERD created three new tracks for the new film – the first of which, Squeeze Me, will be available from 7 January. Two other songs will be released in the coming weeks, Patrick Star and Sandy Squirrel, named after SpongeBob’s trusted sidekicks.

While it may seem incongruous that a group once synonymous with aloof cool and pioneering production would chose to mark their comeback with a SpongeBob score, Williams says the group are firm fans of the sea-dwelling invertebrate.

“We loved going into studio to make music for this film,” Pharrell says. “I am one of SpongeBob’s biggest fans – can’t wait for everyone to hear the songs.”

Shae Haley added: “It was a complete honour to be a part of this project. SpongeBob and NERD share the same belief that imagination is the key to everything.”

NERD (No One Ever Really Dies) formed at the beginning of the millennium, a collaboration between the Neptunes – Hugo and Williams’s production venture – and musician Haley. Their debut album In Search Of was released in 2002 and hailed a new strand of twisted, multi-faceted hip-hop, from the lazy underdog anthem Provider to the tribal grove of She Wants to Move. Their most recent album, 2010’s Nothing, was their fourth.