American Theory
Where did all the flowers go?
New Album Interview
You’ve got a new album called Where Did All The Flowers Go out now on physical media and coming out February 10 on streaming platforms. How did that title come about, and what does it mean to you?
The title was actually the last piece of the puzzle. To better understand where it came from and why it’s so significant to us, here’s some context on the deeper meaning of the record: Devyn’s grandfather passed away suddenly in 2022, and his grandmother’s health was declining due to dementia and heart failure. In Spring of 2024, Devyn had the idea of writing a concept album based on the stages of loss and grief, with each song representing a particular part of the grief cycle based on the mood and lyrics of the track. “Aphasia” represents the initial shock, “Sink Your Teeth” embodies denial, “Bleeding” deals with anger, “Stay” depicts bargaining, “Pieces” expresses pain, “No Sleep” portrays guilt, “For You” illustrates hope, “Take Me Away” showcases depression, and “Your Presence” wraps up the narrative with acceptance. It was important to us for the songs on the album to be connected thematically, emotionally, and sonically, so every song was intentionally written and produced with these stages in mind. Once we had finished writing and recording all of the songs, we started discussing album titles. We went back and forth with a bunch of short titles that felt safe yet generic, but there wasn’t anything that everybody could agree on. We had a record filled with our most vulnerable and heartfelt lyrics yet, but we couldn’t find a title that felt personal.
One day, Mike informed the rest of the band that his dog Ryder had cancer. A few days later, Ryder had passed away. He was relatively young and never had any health complications, so his death was unexpected and tragic. Upon returning home from the hospital, Mike and his girlfriend, Lindsey, noticed that the flowers at the front of the house had withered away suddenly. Lindsey said the words, “Where did all the flowers go?” in response.
We said we didn’t want to do a long title, but the quote hit each of us so hard. Grief and loss always manage to blitz us. We can never fully prepare for the moment when life changes so drastically. The time we have with our loved ones is never enough, and the world feels dimmer without them here. That was exactly what we wanted to capture in our music.
You released the album on physical CD before it hits streaming platforms. What made you want to do that first, and what do you like about physical releases?
Spotify has always been a company of…questionable ethics. Daniel Elk stooped to a new low in 2025 when he invested $700 million into a an AI-powered drone weapons company. Additionally, the flood of AI music on Spotify has severely diluted the amount of money that artists make. We saw many respected artists remove their music from Spotify in protest, and we wanted to do the same. However, we had to acknowledge how streaming has given our band the opportunity to tour the country and connect with fans around the world. We wouldn’t be where we are without streaming, plain and simple, and we are way too small of a band for a physical-only strategy to work. We would be effectively cutting off many of our fans, and the last thing we want to do is alienate our fanbase.
Instead, we decided to do a hybrid strategy consisting of releasing the album on physical media way in advance. This would give diehard fans an opportunity to show support and collect our music, while still offering some of the songs on streaming for the convenience of casual fans (as well as people who don’t own CD players)
Streaming subscriptions devalue music due to the ability to play anything on demand. It also takes away ownership from the consumer. Physical media restores value to music and provides ownership to the consumer. We hope that physical media is the answer for restoring music ownership and putting power back into the hands of artists and listeners.
Was there a song on the album that came together really quickly or surprised you once it was finished?
Pretty much every song was written and demoed in a session or two. When inspiration strikes, we do a good job of allowing songs to naturally evolve in the moment rather than trying to force any ideas to happen. Sink Your Teeth was the first song written for this record, and it took much longer than the rest. We think it’s because we were still trying to figure out the identity of the record. Once we finally finished it, we were excited with the outcome and felt inspired to build around it with the other tracks.
How has your songwriting or sound evolved on this record compared to earlier releases?
Our goal for this record was to blend some of our heaviest material to date with some of our poppiest. Think “Charli XCX goes metalcore” or something like that. Strong melody has always been an important foundation for our songwriting, but we really tried to dial in our hooks to make them as catchy as possible. The “heavy” aspect is a more recent development. Ever since Eric started screaming, we’ve started writing more riffs with unclean vocals in mind. That opened up a whole world of new possibilities. We want every moment of our songs to be interesting and immersive, and part of that comes from making every second of audio as exciting and memorable as it can be. Using extreme contrast between our poppy moments and heavy moments allowed us to achieve that.
What’s something you hope people take from listening to the album?
The world is terrifying right now. The United States government is corrupt and people’s rights are being stripped away daily. Billionaires own everything and they do not care for your wellbeing. It feels weird to be promoting a record right now that isn’t politically motivated, because it feels like it just doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. In fact, our next record is very politically driven, and we are already gearing up to start recording final takes for it.
That said, everyone in the world is also dealing with personal loss and grief. We hope that our record can be a distraction from fear and pain. It would be awesome for listeners to connect to the stories we sing about in these songs, and find peace and/or understanding with the loss they are suffering through in their own lives. At the same time, if some people just want to rock out to the record without thinking deeply about what we are saying, that’s awesome too.
Interview by Hunter Hart
Photos by Kristen Pittman