Press kit, The Velveteers · Press kit, official use
After spending their teens developing a distinctively badass amalgam of punk attitude, old-school metal thunder, and gutter-glam charisma, The Velveteers are using the obsessions of their adolescence to soundtrack the messy emotions of adulthood. The Boulder, Colorado, trio’s second album, A Million Knives, chronicles the volatile truth of being an artist in the music industry while still clinging to the joy they felt when they were just learning their instruments. “When you’re a kid, you just have a natural curiosity,” says singer/guitarist Demi Demitro. “As you grow older, the world makes you jaded. This album is about the hard truth that no matter how hard you protect your heart, it’s just going to be broken.” An even harder truth: Often you’re the one breaking it. Or, as Demi puts it, “Sometimes you realize that you’re the one stabbing yourself in the heart with a million knives.”Writing and recording and in some cases re-recording A Million Knives was a painful experience for the band, but a necessary one: a process of musical and emotional self-discovery. By acknowledging the travails of that process, they’ve created an album that stretches out into imaginative directions, that offers new thrills and twists. The Velveteers devise new ways to combine crunchy guitars and rumbling drums, so that every song hinges on some wild new ideas: the heavy disco rhythms of “Bound In Leather,” the fluorescent flourishes of “Go Fly Away,” and most impressively the devastating confessionals of “Up Here” and “Fix Me.” “Demi was writing all these songs about heartbreak,” says drummer Baby Pottersmith. “She was writing about love fading away or being torn apart, and wishing things could still have this magic that you used to feel. In my head, I was comparing it to our band. We were trying to be perfect about every little thing, so we overthought it. That made everything painful.
