Death Cab for Cutie have emerged from their anniversary celebration of 'Plans' with new music. The group has announced their 11th studio album, 'I Built You A Tower,' out everywhere on June 5, and shared the first sample with the song, "Riptides."

Ben Gibbard and Nick Harmer from the group recently stopped by our KROQ studios in Los Angeles to talk with Megan Holiday about the new project, reconnecting to their earlier work, and how personal grief management helped inform the album.

While on tour to celebrate the milestone for 'Plans,' and coming off anniversaries for the album 'Transatlanticism' and The Postal Service's 'Give Up,' singer Ben Gibbard was also going through a divorce, having to put the emotions surrounding his relationship aside to perform in arenas across the country. "It was a really difficult period in my life, but I was also tasked with going on stage in arenas and translating these records, performing these records for people," Ben admits.

"I had to compartmentalize everything I was going through personally in order to perform every night, which is something that people have to do in their daily lives. We all have to do that in order to do our jobs. If we're gonna do our jobs well, we have to leave certain stuff at the door and come in and try to execute our jobs," he adds. "So, In the process of doing that, I found myself really meditating on this idea of compartmentalization, emotional compartmentalization, and how oftentimes, we have to compartmentalize grief or pain in our lives so that we can just either get through the day or get through a task we have to do."

"So, I kind of stumbled into this metaphor or this idea of like building a tower and placing in your kind of emotional landscape and placing trauma or pain or suffering into it, so that you're aware that it's there. You can see the edifice in the distance, but it's also the details of it, the actual way it looks, the way it actually feels is somewhat compartmentalized in that edifice," reveals Gibbard. "There are inevitably times where those traumas, those pains, those experiences, they escape the kind of the thing you've enclosed them in at often very inopportune times and times you're not expecting, and that can be you're driving down a street where you know you had this experience with somebody that you once cared about and just comes flooding back, you know, we've all had these experiences in our lives. So to me the central idea of the record and the central theme of the record is that compartmentalization of grief and how sometimes it breaks out of the compartments that we try to hold it in."

That thread extends through Death Cab's lead single, "Riptides," as the band explores what it's like to experience your own personal story alongside a more global trauma with everyone else. "I think at its core of the song is about how when we're going through something personally, oftentimes, certainly in the modern world, there are things going on on the global scale or the national scale that are incredibly traumatic for a lot of people and affect people very deeply," explains Ben. "Certainly the last couple of years, you know, there's been innumerable tragedies and atrocities around the world. And you know when someone is going through their own, trying to manage their own life after dealing with something painful or a trauma or something like that, oftentimes we find ourselves saying things like, 'well, I really can't complain,' you know, we were saying this during the pandemic too. 'Well, I really can't complain, I mean, I have a roof in my head,' but it's like, yeah, that's true, but also you're going through something incredibly difficult, and it's OK for you to focus on that, you don't need to qualify that there are other people suffering even because we all know that."

"It's an even more debilitating effect on you emotionally because you feel what you feel, but also you feel the sufferin ...

Sienna Spiro is quickly reaching new heights, almost weekly, thanks to a staggering voice and her emotionally shattering pen. The young songwriter has captured the attention of everyone who has heard the 20-year-old British artist, forcing her to quickly get over what she calls "terrible stage fright," en route to a sold out tour.

The "Die On This Hill" singer recently joined us in Chicago, and talked with Audacy and B96's Karla about tapping into heartbreak and her journey to this new level of success during an Audacy Check In.

"I feel like everything is happening quick, that it's like hard to be present and enjoy it, but I'm so happy to be here and just, yeah, love everything," shares Spiro.

It was only last year that Sienna started properly playing shows, and now she has a sold out run in cities across North America. "I was a terrible performer, I was so shy, I would like sit there and like cover my face," she reveals. "I had terrible stage fright, but I think it's like, you know, you just keep doing it and I, I love it, even though I was so scared, I love doing it, and you just keep doing it and you learn how to trust yourself a little bit more and, I guess get used to it, but you know, I still get really nervous before shows."

Spiro has quickly made a mark thanks to raw and vulnerable songwriting, and shares that although the pain sounds romantic in nature, it's so much more. "Even though a lot of my songs sound like they're love songs and like romantic songs, I think the biggest heartbreaks I've had are friendships," Sienna admits. "You can experience heartbreak from family or friends or work or situations, or of course romantic love, but I think I'm just a very passionate person and I care a lot, and when I'm invested in something I'm really there and I'm just in it."

"I think that's why it causes me a lot of, I guess I get quite sad, you know, I lay it all out for people," she adds. "That's just the kind of person I am, and I think that that obviously means I get let down a lot. I just give a lot, if I love someone or if I'm there for someone, I'm there, and I'm just all in it, so I just have found myself getting let down a lot in my life because of how much I pour into it."

These days though Spiro finds herself "in a really great place," finding inspiration and really just finding ways to figure it out. "There's a lot going on in life," she tells Karla. "I'm 20, I'm learning how to be a human, and I think, you know what's really funny is like, sometimes I'll do these things and people will be like, 'oh, what advice would you give to this person,' and I'm like, 'I'm figuring it out myself.'"

For more from Sienna Spiro, check out the full Audacy Check In above.

Still riding high from the release of their sixth studio album, 'Everest,' Halestorm once again has a booked and busy year in front of them, sharing their latest single, "Like A Woman Can," playing festivals around the world, and still having the best time doing it all.

"We try to have as good of a time as we can as often as we can, because we get to play rock and roll that we love, so we haven't worked in like 20-some years," smiles Joe Hottinger. "I highly recommend joining a band. It's the best time you'll ever have."

"It is the coolest thing ever," adds Lzzy Hale. "And, you know, you appreciate things as you go along too, because when we first started touring it was like, first it was like a conversion van, and then it was a two RVs that we were touring with and trying to keep up with the buses and whoever we were touring with."

"If we've learned anything it's not where you are, it's who you're with," says Joe. "You can be at an Applebee's on the side of the road in Nebraska and have one of the best nights ever, you know, it's a good time."

"I forget when this was, but there was at one point in time where we had to figure out how to make it across the highway to get to a Cracker Barrel because that was literally the only thing around on a day off, and we finally made it there," laughs Lzzy. "It was like a triumph, and then we just stayed at the Cracker Barrel, like playing checkers."

Also on the road, the Halestorm crew likes to crash karaoke spots and surprise the locals. "It's always surprising because we'll be, like I said, in the middle of nowhere and one of our favorite things to do on days off with us, and there's some of our crew that really gets into it as well, is go to karaoke bars. I'm always surprised that like there's a handful of people that are maybe, they don't notice at first and then like as the night goes on like, 'wait, are you?' you know."

Lzzy is sure to always play to crowd with karaoke selections, the true mark of a pro. " I try to play to the audience, if we're in kind of a mellower, more kind of country bar, I'll do some Bonnie Raitt to start out, and then I'll kick it up with some Pat Benatar and maybe some AC/DC after that. You gotta ease them into it."

Sometimes Halestorm even get requests to play their own songs, like the latest, "Like A Woman Can," which Lzzy says is structured just like the love of a woman. "It embodies that, the feeling that you get from being loved by a woman and, there's nothing like that."

To hear more about the deep cuts of Halestorm, working with Bad Company, and more on the album 'Everest,' check out the full conversation above.