The four members of Dream Feed. (Courtesy Annie Rose)
“Music has been going on since, well, the beginning of the world,” said Dream Feed’s lead singer Miguel Dakota. “So it’s hard to play new progressions and things like that. Where you find the ability to change and grow is in tones.”
Dream Feed, self-described purveyors of “indie, rock, funk, (and) pop,” are looking to bring that mix-and-match attitude to their music this year. The Colorado-based quartet is ready to make noise in the Denver music scene with their forthcoming single, “Touch the Flame,” bringing honest lyricism and experimental grooves along for the ride.
The new track, which will be released April 22, focuses on how “we often put off making changes to better our world until it’s too late.”
Dream Feed formed after singer Miguel Dakota became a finalist on America’s Got Talent in 2014. He has since taken the mantle as the band’s frontman, backed by guitarist Ryan Wagner, bassist Will Gaines and Brian Nolan on drums. Dabbling with indie rock sounds, the band’s early work landed them a spot at the 2017 Velorama Festival in Denver’s RiNo district, a lineup spearheaded by alternative rock heavyweights in Wilco and Death Cab For Cutie. Now, Dream Feed sets their sights on shaking things up sonically, looking back at their influences to push forward.
The members of Dream Feed look to all corners of the musical canvas, with Gaines’ background in jazz, Wagner’s interest in the “lo-fi bedroom sound” and the band’s collective love for ’60s rock.
“It creates a hodgepodge of experimentation,” Dakota said of the band’s production philosophy. Their music ranges in tone and style, flipping back and forth between the vocal flair and slamming guitars of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and breezier beach-punk tunes more reminiscent of Sublime.
While Dream Feed continues to seek new sounds, their upcoming project also touches on the band’s anxieties about the world around them, leaning into a much darker direction for the group.
Their newest effort is centered around “technology as a big disruption in the world,” according to Dakota, “and how we get addicted to our screens and social media too easily.”
Upon first listen, “Touch the Flame” is louder, punchier and angrier than Dream Feed’s prior discography.
Cover art for the single ‘Touch The Flame’ (Courtesy Dream Feed)
“We make excuses for our habits because we don’t want to disrupt our comforts,” Dakota said. “Instead we seem to misuse the consciousness we have been endowed with to make things bigger, faster, more comfortable. The cost of that misuse of our minds is only paid by us and everything around us. The small fires we let burn at distance become the flames that engulf our world.”
In the midst of an ongoing pandemic, climate crisis and divisive political atmosphere, all exacerbated by social media, maybe a track like “Touch The Flame” is exactly the forceful nudge we need. It’s message is timely, even if it was written two months before the COVID-19 pandemic arose.
“There’s an eerie sense about the song,” Dakota said. “There’s certainly stuff in our subconscious that we’re pulling from, a collective conscious,”
Dream Feed’s music can be heard here. “Touch the Flame” can be found here when released.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Ben Berman at ben.berman@colorado.edu.
