Vespera
After five years away, Seattle/Los Angeles trio Vespera return with their signature blend of ethereal atmosphere and crushing heaviness—reshaped by years on the road and ready to push their sound further.
Vespera has always existed somewhere between extremes: ethereal and aggressive, intimate and overwhelming, vulnerable and unflinching. Emerging independently between Seattle and Los Angeles in 2016, the band built a distinctive identity around the tension between atmosphere and heaviness, using weight as a way to explore anxiety, isolation, memory and the darker corners of the human experience. Just as the band’s momentum was building, circumstances repeatedly intervened. A planned North American tour with Monuments and Skyharbor was postponed and rebuilt for the following year, only to be lost to COVID-19. A separate tour with NateWantsToBattle also disappeared, while a 2021 run was cut short when COVID spread through the touring party. Along the way, Vespera endured setbacks that might have ended most projects: a stolen trailer, a totaled van, and eventually the band quietly disappearing from view. But the story didn’t end there. During the years away, the members remained immersed in music, performing and working on the road with artists including Demi Lovato, KT Tunstall, Matt Corby, Jutes, Phem and Scene Queen. Those experiences gave them new perspectives, skills and creative reference points to bring back to Vespera.
Now returning fully independently, Vespera finds itself in a musical landscape that feels unexpectedly familiar. A new generation has embraced alternative music, emo, heaviness and the culture surrounding it without the baggage of nostalgia. For listeners discovering the band now, the past isn’t necessarily a memory—it’s an entry point.
Five years later, Vespera returns with a different perspective and a much larger understanding of what it means to build something independently. Casval Wolfe, Jonathan Schwartz and Cairn Tse-Lalonde spent the years between chapters performing, touring, producing and working alongside artists across very different musical worlds, experiences that reshaped how they approach their own music. The reconstructed definitive edition of The Thoughts That Plague You closes the loop on Vespera’s first era, while new material points toward something less interested in genre boundaries and more interested in possibility. In this conversation, Casval reflects on where Vespera came from, what the years away changed, and why the band’s return is ultimately less about revisiting the past than discovering what comes next.
What first drew you to music, and when did you realize that it was something you wanted to pursue seriously?
Some of my earliest memories are musical. I remember trying to play my grandmother’s piano when I was an infant, before I really understood what an instrument was. A few years later, I remember performing on the guiro. Those are two of the clearest memories I still have from that age.
A more decisive moment came in sixth grade. I joined concert band and was assigned the flute. The second our band director asked whether anyone was interested in playing bass, my hand shot up. I joined the school’s jazz band and switched over almost immediately. It was the first instrument I felt I had actively chosen for myself.
I started playing electric guitar shortly afterward, and it became my primary instrument through my teenage years and early adulthood. I played guitar in most of the bands I joined during that period. I didn’t return to bass until years later, when work as a touring musician brought me back to it for the first time since jazz band.
As a teenager, I also started playing for established bands that were going on small tours. I remember the freedom and sense of adventure I felt, and it became addictive. I loved traveling, performing, meeting new people and making friends in places I had never been. I didn’t know exactly what a life in music would look like then, but I knew I wanted that feeling to remain a huge part of mine.
Who were some of your biggest musical influences growing up, and what did you take from them as an artist?
I listened to an enormous range of music growing up: Poison the Well, Misery Signals, Hopesfall, Oceana, Lower Definition, Alexisonfire, As Cities Burn, At the Drive-In and The Mars Volta, Audioslave and Soundgarden, Nirvana, The Bled, Taking Back Sunday, Cartel, Deftones, Circa Survive, The Cure, Cursive, Damiera, Death Cab for Cutie, Thrice, Edison Glass, Envy on the Coast, Explosions in the Sky, The Fall of Troy, The Format, Frou Frou, Glassjaw, Life in Your Way, Incubus, La Dispute, Linkin Park, Copeland, Lydia, Mae, mewithoutYou, Mew, MUTEMATH, Pedro the Lion, The Pillows, Q and Not U, The Receiving End of Sirens and The Dear Hunter, Saosin, Shai Hulud, The Shins, Sum 41, Terminal, Tera Melos and Underoath, among many others.
One of the first things I bought with my own money was an MP3 player because I wanted to carry more music without bringing my entire CD book everywhere. I played in a lot of different bands and carried all of those influences around in my head.
That breadth taught me not to hear genre as a set of borders. From some artists I took emotional directness, from others rhythm, atmosphere, melody, dissonance, restraint or the courage to let a song change shape. Vespera became a place where those instincts could coexist instead of being separated into different projects.
Before Vespera, what did your early journey as a musician look like, and what experiences shaped the artist you eventually became?
I played in a lot of different bands and spent years absorbing different ways of writing, performing and working with people. Before Vespera, I had played for several relevant artists and bands, and those experiences taught me how different a song can feel from inside the machinery of a working project.
I eventually moved from Los Angeles to Seattle with my partner at the time. Los Angeles had become overwhelming for us, so we wanted a change of scenery. In Seattle, I realized how essential music was to me. I auditioned for Volumes and later joined The Alchemy Index, which sadly began imploding almost as soon as I arrived.
Once I understood that situation was ending, I started writing the first demos that would eventually become Vespera. In that sense, the band began with me trying to preserve the part of myself that still needed somewhere to create.
What initially led to the creation of Vespera, and what did you want the band to sound and feel like when you first started?
Jon was also playing in The Alchemy Index, so once I realized that situation was falling apart, I pulled him aside, showed him what I had been writing and asked whether he wanted to be involved. While I was in Bethesda, Maryland recording the album, he came out, tried the material and jammed through a number of the songs with me. That was really the beginning.
Cairn had gone to school with Jon. When Jon and I posted that we were looking for a guitarist, Cairn was literally the first email in our inbox. The project came together naturally from there.
I didn’t want Vespera to be defined by one narrow genre. I wanted it to feel ethereal, enigmatic and aggressive // sometimes all within the same song. It needed to be heavy without becoming one dimensional, atmospheric without becoming passive, and melodic without sanding away its edges. I had carried so many different influences through so many different bands that Vespera became the place where I could finally stop separating them.
How would you describe Vespera’s sound to someone hearing the band for the first time in 2026?
At its clearest, Vespera is heavy alternative music that uses progressive metal and post-hardcore as a vocabulary rather than a boundary. The songs move between electronic texture, intimate vocals, cinematic space, melody, progressive tension and enormous guitar weight.
Some moments almost disappear into atmosphere, while others are designed to feel physically overwhelming. It is less useful to describe Vespera through one genre than through the relationship between those extremes.
What do you think makes Vespera distinctly Vespera?
Contrast is central to everything. We don’t treat vulnerability as the quiet side of the band and heaviness as the aggressive side. They are different expressions of the same tension. The heaviness is a vehicle rather than the endpoint, and melody isn’t simply there to provide relief.
There is also a psychological quality to the writing. Even the most maximal sections are built around an emotional purpose, and the quieter moments are allowed to hold real weight. I think Vespera is most distinct in the space between those elements and in what we choose not to resolve for the listener.
Vespera disappeared for several years. Why was now the right time to come back?
It wasn’t originally a calculated decision to bring Vespera back. I reopened an old session because I wanted to finish one song properly. That led me into another song, then back through the album, and eventually into conversations about the band itself. At some point, the work stopped feeling archaeological and started feeling active again.
We also had five years of experience that Vespera did not have before // different stages, different artists, different production environments and a much clearer understanding of what we wanted to protect. The timing felt right because we were no longer trying to recreate the momentum that disappeared. We finally had enough distance to understand the first chapter and enough clarity to begin building the next one.
When did you first realize that Vespera wasn’t finished?
I had just moved back from Japan when my friend Tosh told me that OTTTO was looking for a singer. I hadn’t really sung in years, but I decided to audition. Preparing for it made me feel creatively active for the first time in a very long time. It reawakened a part of me that I hadn’t necessarily lost, but had stopped using.
I carried that momentum back into Vespera. I started opening unfinished songs, exploring the ideas without much expectation and gradually putting things together again. What began as me following a creative impulse became something much larger.
There wasn’t one dramatic moment when I decided that Vespera had to return. Tosh made me aware of an opportunity, that opportunity made me sing and create again, and I followed that energy back into Vespera until I realized I was actively building its future.
You experienced an extraordinary string of setbacks // cancelled tours, COVID, a stolen trailer, and a totaled van. Was there ever a moment when you genuinely thought Vespera might be over?
In a practical sense, yes. We never announced a breakup or had a formal farewell. The possibility of continuing simply eroded through a sequence of setbacks.
Our tour with Monuments and Skyharbor was postponed and rebuilt for spring 2020, only to disappear when the pandemic began. A separate NateWantsToBattle run was also lost, and when it was finally rebooked in 2021, it ended early because of COVID. The hit-and-run involving our touring vehicle and the theft of our trailer compounded an already unsustainable situation.
At a certain point, continuing to force the band forward would not have been responsible. Vespera didn’t end in one dramatic moment. It became quiet because every practical route forward seemed to disappear at once.
How much did losing that momentum affect you personally and creatively?
More than I understood at the time. Vespera was completely DIY, so every listener, article, playlist, relationship and tour had been built person by person. Losing momentum didn’t only mean losing dates on a calendar. It felt like losing years of accumulated proof that the work was moving somewhere.
Personally, it forced me to confront how closely I had tied forward motion to whether the work mattered. Creatively, I redirected that energy into touring, production and helping other artists realize their music. I kept developing, but for a long time I stopped imagining those skills returning to Vespera.
The distance eventually became useful. I don’t feel compelled to bring the band back through resentment or panic. Whatever momentum we build now can be more deliberate.
Looking back, do you see those years of interruption differently now?
I do, but I don’t want to romanticize them. At the time, they felt like failures rather than lessons, and some of what happened was simply damaging and outside our control.
What has changed is my ability to separate the trajectory we lost from the value of the work itself. The music did not become less meaningful because the infrastructure around it collapsed. Those years also made us better musicians, performers and operators. I can acknowledge what the interruption cost without allowing it to define what happens next.
Did stepping away from Vespera give you a perspective that you couldn’t have had while the band was moving forward?
Yes. When the band was active, we were constantly writing, producing, releasing, pitching, rehearsing and trying to reach the next opportunity. It was difficult to distinguish movement from direction because everything felt urgent.
Stepping away showed me how many decisions had been shaped by that urgency. I learned that movement and direction are not the same thing. I can now hear which parts of Vespera are essential and which choices belonged to a younger version of myself trying to keep the project alive. That perspective allows us to protect the emotional core without repeating every method we used before.
Did returning to Vespera feel like coming home, or like starting a completely new band?
It felt like both. The emotional architecture was immediately familiar, but five years had changed our instincts, abilities and standards.
It was like returning to a room I helped build and discovering that the walls were still there, but the light entered differently. I recognized the foundation, but I no longer wanted to arrange everything inside it the same way. That tension between familiarity and discovery is part of what makes the return creatively useful.
What did the years away change about the way you hear and understand this music?
The record was written very close to experiences involving exploitation, addiction, anger, self-erasure and recovery. At the time, the emotions were immediate, and some of the lyrics functioned as a way of surviving them.
Now, I can hear a larger movement toward accountability, compassion and boundaries. I have more patience for the younger person who wrote these songs, but less need to relive every feeling exactly as it happened. The music sounds less like a place I am trapped inside and more like evidence that I moved through it.
The Thoughts That Plague You was originally conceived as a single album. Why was it important to reconstruct and present the definitive sequence now?
The music already existed publicly, but it had never been presented in the form we originally imagined. It was written as one continuous fourteen-song record, but circumstances caused it to be released across three separate EPs.
Reconstructing it was less about revisiting the past and more about finally allowing that first chapter to exist as intended. Once it did, I could stop carrying it as unfinished business. In that sense, presenting the definitive sequence wasn’t about looking backward. It allowed us to complete that chapter, put it behind us and create a clean line between what Vespera was and what it can become.
What was it like listening back to material that was written so many years ago?
It was strange, but also illuminating. I could hear the ambition and urgency we had, along with versions of myself that I understand very differently now.
There are production choices, performances and even lyrics I would probably approach differently today, but I didn’t want to rewrite the person who made them. The honesty of those decisions is part of the record. Listening back gave me a greater appreciation for what we were reaching toward, even when we didn’t yet have all the language or experience to fully articulate it.
Do the songs on The Thoughts That Plague You mean something different to you now than they did when you wrote them?
Absolutely. The songs haven’t changed, but the person listening to them has.
“Obsidian Dreams” once carried the ache of wanting an earlier life back. Now, I hear it less as a desire to return and more as a promise not to hold myself back again. “The Thoughts That Plague You” came from a period of addiction following an accident. At the time, it was an immediate confession. Now, I hear it with more context and compassion for the person trying to survive it.
“Smile” has changed for me as well. I once understood caring for someone as being willing to disappear beneath their suffering. Today, I understand that love and compassion also require boundaries. Standing beside someone beneath the weight is not the same as allowing it to consume you.
The distance has allowed the songs to become less about reliving those experiences and more about understanding what they taught me.
“Prospera Sotelo” eventually became the outro of “Smile.” What made that the right way for the piece to live?
“Prospera Sotelo” was always more of a coda than a separate chapter. The title was a nod to Spencer Sotelo, who appeared on “Paradise,” but musically the piece functioned as the final exhale of the record.
When we placed everything into its intended form, it became clear that its emotional purpose was to exist in the aftermath of “Smile.” Making it part of that song allowed the record’s final statement to resolve naturally, rather than presenting the outro as a fifteenth movement with an identity it was never meant to carry. It feels less like another song beginning and more like the last thought slowly leaving the room.
Is The Thoughts That Plague You a snapshot of the old Vespera, or does it still feel connected to who you are today?
It is both. The specific sound, decisions and circumstances belong to an earlier version of Vespera, and I don’t have any interest in trying to reproduce that moment exactly. At the same time, the emotional architecture still feels deeply connected to who we are.
The contrast between intimacy and enormous weight, the atmosphere, the psychological introspection and the desire to use heaviness as a vehicle rather than an endpoint are all still present. The record is a doorway into Vespera, not the destination. It explains where we came from, while the music we’re creating now shows where those instincts have led us.
What song from the record feels most representative of Vespera, and why?
That’s difficult because each song represents a different aspect of Vespera. If I had to choose one from this record, it would probably be “Bloom.” It was always the clearest middle ground of our earlier sound, balancing melody, atmosphere and weight.
Even then, it only tells part of the story. “Fading Light” and “Painted Fragile” carry a younger energy that has since been redefined in the new music. “Sleepless” was once one of our heaviest songs, but it almost feels like a pop song compared to some of the heavier sections I’m writing now. “Smile” contains sonic ideas that point toward where Vespera is going, even though I relate to its lyrical perspective very differently today.
“Bloom” may be the closest center point of the record, but I don’t think any existing song completely represents Vespera’s future. To understand the band fully, you have to hear the contrast between them.
You spent those years performing with artists including Demi Lovato, KT Tunstall, Matt Corby, Jutes, Phem, and Scene Queen. What did working in those different environments teach you?
Those experiences took many different forms. All three members of Vespera have performed for Carlie Hanson and NateWantsToBattle. Jon and I also performed for Phem; Jon played for Scene Queen, and he and Cairn currently perform with Jutes. I’ve personally played for artists including Rashmeet Kaur, Sayak Das and Huey Mack.
Outside of performing, I worked in playback for Demi Lovato and Royal & the Serpent; tour managed KT Tunstall, Matt Corby and Say She She; and currently tour manage and run playback for VinceMp3.
Every artist has a different musical language, culture and definition of what makes a great show. You learn to enter their world, understand what the music needs and support that vision without imposing your own identity onto it.
It also taught me that a great show is ultimately hundreds of unglamorous decisions made correctly. Regardless of scale, preparation, restraint, communication and trust are what allow a performance to feel effortless.
Did playing for other artists change how you approach being in your own band?
It removed a lot of ego from the process. When you work for another artist, your responsibility is to serve the song, the show and their vision. You learn to separate making a valuable contribution from needing to be at the center of everything.
Bringing that perspective back into Vespera has made me a better collaborator and leader. I’m more deliberate about arrangements, rehearsals, production and how every person’s role contributes to the whole. Creative freedom is much easier to protect when the structure supporting it is strong.
What did you learn during those years that directly influenced the new Vespera?
We learned that heaviness can come from dynamics, restraint and communication, not only distortion. Working around artists with completely different relationships to melody, space, rhythm and production expanded what we considered possible inside Vespera.
We also returned with considerably more operational maturity. Rehearsals, playback, transitions, visual presentation, contingency planning and the way you treat the people around you all affect the music’s ability to reach an audience. The band stopped publicly for several years, but the musicians never stopped developing. The new Vespera is bringing all of that experience home.
The new music seems to allow atmosphere, intimacy, electronic production, and extreme heaviness to coexist. Where did that evolution come from?
Those elements were always somewhere inside Vespera, but we understand how to integrate them much more naturally now. The years away exposed us to different production methods, rhythmic ideas and ways of using space. We also stopped worrying about whether every decision fit inside the expectations attached to a heavy band.
Now, an intimate vocal, an unexpected rhythmic idea, an electronic texture, an ambient passage and an extremely heavy section can all belong to the same song if they serve the same emotional purpose. We aren’t adding electronics or atmosphere around a metal song. They are all part of the same language. The contrast between them is the sound.
What parts of the Vespera people remember are you deliberately leaving behind, and what parts of the band’s identity remain essential?
We’re leaving behind the pressure to prove our heaviness, conform to a particular genre or capitalize on every moment before it disappears. We’re also moving beyond some of the youthful urgency in the older material. That energy is still present, but it has been refined by experience and intention.
What remains essential is the contrast: intimacy against overwhelming weight, melody against dissonance and atmosphere against sudden violence. Electronic texture, emotional honesty and psychological introspection are still central to the band. We aren’t abandoning Vespera’s identity. We’re removing the limitations that once surrounded it.
Is there any pressure to recreate the Vespera that existed before the hiatus?
There may be an external expectation, because familiarity is comforting and people often want a band to remain exactly as it was when they discovered it. It isn’t a pressure we’re interested in accepting.
Five years of living and working in other musical environments changed us. Trying to reproduce all of our old decisions would feel dishonest, and I don’t think we could do it convincingly even if we wanted to. Our responsibility is not to recreate someone’s memory of Vespera. It is to remain recognizably ourselves while making music that only the people we are today could create.
How do you balance people’s expectations of the older material with your desire to move somewhere new?
We respect the older material by continuing to play it and allowing it to exist honestly. We just don’t allow it to establish the boundaries of what Vespera can become.
People’s expectations tell us what they connected with, but we don’t have to interpret those expectations literally. If the emotional truth remains // the vulnerability, contrast, atmosphere and weight // I believe listeners will follow us into a new musical vocabulary. We aren’t trying to drag the old audience somewhere against their will. We’re inviting them to continue exploring with us.
You’ve described the older songs as an entrance rather than the destination. Where do you want that entrance to lead?
Toward music that doesn’t exist yet. I want Vespera to create a new lane that can move both inside and outside of genre without losing its identity. I’m not necessarily interested in inventing another genre label. I’m interested in creating our own set of rules.
That means no longer rejecting an idea because it doesn’t traditionally belong in heavy music. A rhythm, vocal approach, texture, chord movement or production technique can come from somewhere listeners would never associate with Vespera. If it communicates the emotion honestly, it belongs in the song. The objective isn’t to place several genres beside one another or create contrast purely for novelty. It is to absorb those influences so completely that they begin to feel native to Vespera and become a truer representation of where I am as an artist today.
The entrance should prepare listeners for contrast, not for a formula. The sounds and structures can become less predictable while the emotional architecture remains consistent: intimacy, atmosphere, tension and overwhelming release. I want every new song to expand Vespera’s boundaries while making the identity at its center feel even stronger.
For younger listeners discovering Vespera today, these songs aren’t nostalgia // they’re new music. Does that change the way you think about the record?
It does. For us, these songs carry years of history, interruption and memories of what was happening around them. A younger listener doesn’t necessarily hear any of that. They simply hear a piece of music they discovered today.
That frees the record from becoming a memorial to a particular period of our lives. If the songs can still connect with someone who has no relationship to Vespera’s past, then they still have a living function. We don’t need anyone to feel nostalgic with us. The record can introduce itself on its own terms and become an invitation into what comes next.
Your music has often used heaviness as a form of psychological introspection. What are you trying to understand through music now?
I’m less interested in simply describing pain than I am in understanding what it changes. What do we carry forward after something has ended? When does protecting yourself become isolation? How do you remain open to other people without disappearing inside them?
Music gives me somewhere to place contradictory emotions without resolving them too neatly. Heaviness is valuable because some thoughts don’t feel honest at a conversational volume. I’m still using it to look inward, but now I’m more interested in what we become after surviving something than in the suffering itself.
Has your relationship with vulnerability changed since Vespera began, and has getting older changed what you’re willing to put into a song?
When Vespera began, vulnerability often meant disclosure. I thought honesty required explaining the entire wound while I was still standing inside it. Getting older hasn’t made me less willing to reveal something real, but it has made me more selective and precise about how I do it.
I’m willing to place more emotional complexity into a song now, but I feel less obligated to surrender every piece of personal context. Privacy and honesty are not opposites. My writing has become much more minimal because I trust implication and try to say enough without explaining everything.
A listener doesn’t need every biographical detail to recognize the emotional truth inside a song. Vulnerability isn’t measured by how much you reveal. It is measured by the accuracy of what remains.
What does your creative process look like when you begin writing // does a song usually start with a lyric, melody, sound, idea, or feeling?
I rarely begin with a complete concept. Usually, one fragment has enough energy to make me follow it. That could be a vocal cadence, a chord movement, a texture, a rhythm or a small piece of language. I may not immediately understand what it means, but I can normally feel its emotional temperature.
From there, writing and production develop together. I move between the arrangement, sound design and melody until the emotional center of the song becomes clearer. The music often teaches me what the song is trying to say before I can explain it myself.
Lyrics tend to arrive in fragments rather than as a complete narrative. I gradually reduce them until only the essential language remains, leaving enough negative space for the listener to enter the song and find something of their own inside it. By the end, the sound, melody and words should feel like different ways the same idea is speaking.
What does success mean for Vespera this time around?
Success is momentum that compounds. It means reaching genuine listeners, allowing every release to travel further than the one before it, playing healthier shows and building a touring cycle that can actually sustain itself.
Beyond that, I want Vespera to become a vehicle for good. Our earlier work with The JED Foundation around “Paradise” showed me that the attention surrounding a song can be redirected toward a conversation much larger than the release itself. It also taught me how carefully that should be handled. Personal pain shouldn’t become marketing material, and helping people should never be reduced to making the band appear virtuous.
As Vespera grows, I would like philanthropy to become part of how we operate rather than something we occasionally attach to a campaign. That could mean dedicating revenue from particular releases or merchandise, organizing benefit performances, supporting organizations with genuine expertise or using our platform to place attention where it can be useful. The exact form should depend on what is actually needed, but the principle is simple: if people give us their attention and resources, some of that value should continue moving outward.
I would rather let that work speak through practical, accountable and tangible action. Success means building a healthy, independent project capable of going very far, while ensuring that our capacity to contribute grows alongside our reach.
If the first chapter was about trying to establish Vespera, what is this chapter about, and what are you building now that couldn’t have existed in the band’s first era?
The first chapter was largely about proving that Vespera deserved to exist. This chapter is about deciding what it can become now that we no longer need that permission.
We have broader musicianship, clearer artistic instincts and years of experience building other artists’ shows from both the stage and behind the scenes. We also have complete ownership and control of Vespera. For the first time, we can approach the songs, visual world, live performance and long-term structure as parts of the same idea rather than assembling them reactively while trying to survive the next opportunity.
We’re building something independent without being isolated. We’re open to the right partners, relationships and resources, but the identity at the center remains ours. This chapter is about giving the ambition a structure capable of sustaining it, while creating something that none of us could have made ten years ago.
If you could go back and speak to yourselves in 2016, what would you tell them // and after everything that happened, why Vespera?
I would tell us to protect the work, document everything and build the infrastructure before the momentum arrives. I would tell us not to confuse endurance with health, and not to treat every interruption as a verdict on the value of what we were creating. I would also tell us to be present
enough to enjoy what was happening. We were so focused on reaching the next milestone that we didn’t always recognize how extraordinary some of those moments already were.
I wouldn’t tell our younger selves that every difficult experience happens for a reason. Some things are simply unfair, badly timed or outside your control. Those years changed us, but I don’t need to romanticize them to recognize what they taught us.
Why Vespera? Because it is still the place where every side of us can coexist. If this were only nostalgia, the band would have remained silent. Instead, new ideas kept leading me back to it until the question became less about why Vespera should return and more about why it wasn’t already moving.
After everything, we understand the cost more clearly, and we still choose it.
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