Calling NIGHTBREAKERS Back

Hannah Capotosto from Dual Muse Magazine was able to sit down with NIGHTBREAKERS, a band local to Florida, and have a conversation about music, influence, creation, and the scene itself. As a magazine dedicated to exploring these topics, especially from voices we don’t often hear from, we were more than grateful for the opportunity to sit down with such wonderful people. We invite you to join us for this casual chit-chat and learn about the Tampa natives for yourself.

DMM: So, for people that havent heard of NIGHTBREAKERS, before can you introduce yourselves?

Zakk: We are NIGHTBREAKERS. We are a group from Tampa, Florida. We’re like pop rock/ alternative. I’m Zakk and I'm the singer.

Dan: I’m Dan, I play guitar.

Logan: I’m Logan, the drummer.

Spencer: I’m Spencer, and I play bass.

David: I’m David, and I also play guitar.

DMM: Awesome! What was the start of NIGHTBREAKERS? Did you just happen to come together or was it more of a conscious effort?
Zakk: It was fate. David and I looked up into each other’s eyes from across the room right then and knew we had to start a band, right?
David: Right, even though I didn’t know how to play guitar. [laughter]

Zakk: So Spencer and I, we’re brothers, and we’ve just been playing music our entire lives and David and I went to high school [together],so it was kind of just the three of us at the beginning. We had a drummer at the time when we met Dan. Dan was actually coming to all of our shows and I don’t know if you want to take that part.

Dan: yeah I was like 15. I went to every show and they had no idea who I was for two years until my band was playing and they just happened to like, walk in and see me and that’s how we met.

Zakk: Yeah, we called him Little Rocky Lynch because he looks like Rocky Lynch from R5, just like shredding the guitar, and it’s so funny. And then Dan had known Logan, so Logan is a kickass drummer and was able to learn our songs in one day. He came to practice and we were like “yeah, we’ll keep him” so that’s how we formed and that’s how we all came to know each other.

DMM: I love when fate brings people together, I think it can make a tighter bond sometimes.

Zakk: Exactly, exactly.

DMM: How do each of your personal musical heroes impact the sound you guys create?

Zakk: I think all of our heroes are so diverse, like, his favorite band– you like the 1975-

David: Yeah, I’d say what really got me into playing guitar is like The 1975, The Neighborhood, and Bad Suns. This is close to ten years ago now, I kept hearing those sounds and I wanted to create those sounds and I’ve been doing that since, really.

Zakk: And, like, Logan you’re into-

Logan: Yeah, I grew up on pop-punk and metal bands and stuff like that, so that was my influence coming into everything. Already that’s a wide range but everybody is just so different.

Zakk: We joke and we’re like Avenged Sevenfold to Justin Beiber, you’ll find our sound somewhere in between that. We take a little bit from everything

(NIGHTBREAKERS from left to right: Zakkary, Dan, Logan, David, Spencer)

DMM: Absolutely, we can see it. Do you guys think a lot about visuals for the band or is it just personal style?
Zakk: We think about it a lot. We’ll see things that we like, so like most of what we do now is like Tiktoks and album covers. There’s not like music videos, we haven’t done a big production tour. But, when we’re making our Tiktoks or album covers, we try to think about what the song makes us feel. We have a song that’s about to be coming out– the theme is an apartment. So we’re doing a bunch of visual stuff that’s like literally in a kitchen of an apartment. Trying to make that look cinematic and put someone in our headspace while they listen to the music.

DMM: That actually leads me to my next question perfectly ‘cause I was going to ask about messages and themes in recent music as compared to when you guys first started. Has there been a shift in that do you think?
Zakk: What do you guys think?

David: I definitely think so, especially if you go to the visual part, Tiktok is such a big thing now. A lot of the content we create is catered towards that which is the biggest thing that I’ve seen. That’s the biggest change I’ve seen in the last 10 years or so. 

Zakk: It’s changed as I’m writing lyrics. I used to be a little more… artistic and I would try to think of the craziest way to say something. Now, with TIktok, I try to make it a little more relatable or more visual so I guess that has changed. At the end of the day, though, we’re still taking inspiration from so many different places that we still end up kind of on the same topics. We have a lot of relationships, nostalgic type of music, a lot of stuff where I’m dealing with mental health and trying to figure things out, so the topics have kind of stayed the same. Just how we approach them as the music industry has changed we’ve changed as well.

DMM: Does it ever feel like you sort of have to restrict yourself, like if you’re trying to come across as more relatable than artistic? Or does it still feel like you?

Zakk, laughing: I think it’s easier! It still feels like us. I wouldn’t call it dumbing down because I’ve found a nice pocket where I still feel it’s artistic, but I used to be like “okay, I have to find a way where no one has said this before’. Now if I’m feeling it, the first thing that comes to my mind, that’s what I’ll write down. Even going back to like 2021, “We used to be close, now you’re just someone I used to know.” That’s so basic but it hits hard.

DMM: It does.

Zakk: 15 years ago I would've wrote like… I don’t even know, like, “we drifted apart, and now you’re miles away”, things like that. Just vague, scripted. 

DMM: Definitely. Is it a pretty collaborative effort when it comes to making a song? Or is it one person for lyrics, one person for music, so on?

Zakk: When we’re making a song it’s very very collaborative. We’re talking about how the songs make us feel, we should add something that’s pop-y like this or jump-y like this. Usually with lyrics, though, I’ll go lock myself in a room and drink a couple Diet Cokes and get into my emotions. Then, I’ll get judged by them and they’ll be like “This lyric sucks!” and I’ll change it. We knocked out like seven demos in the last 2-3 months.

DMM: That’s so exciting!

Zakk: We’re now step by step picking them apart and figuring out what works and what doesn’t.

DMM: In terms of the way your music has changed, do you think there’s a song that feels the most NIGHTBREAKERS now as compared to at the beginning?
Zakk: What about you, Spencer, you’ve been quiet.

Spencer: I think the newer songs we’ve been putting out recently, “Fake Smile” and “Call Me Back” have felt more, I guess, NIGHTBREAKERS.

Zakk: They don’t feel like anybody else.

Spencer: I think everything we put out, in general, has felt like what we wanted it to be. It was us. We have really hit this new age where it’s like, this is the best of trying to go pop while sticking to our rock. We’ve hit a good middle ground.

Zakk: Every now and then our songs will come up on our shuffle. Like “Bloodshot Blue Eyes” came up on shuffle the other day and I was like “this still sounds like we could have put it out this year”. I feel like we’ve never compromised on what we wanted to make and I think that’s what makes the NIGHTBREAKERS sound. We know exactly how a song should be in our heads and we know it has to be like that. We won’t conform to– I feel like I keep bringing up “Close” but when we went to put it out we pitched it to a playlisting company. We were so heartbroken because all the pop playlists thought it was too rock and all the rock ones thought it was too generic pop. We were like “well that sucks!” but it helped us stay true to the artistic side of it. I feel like if we leaned either of the ways it wouldn’t have been a NIGHTBREAKERS song. 

DMM: I feel like one thing that really stands out about your music is that it is so cohesive. Looking back at earlier EPs to more recent releases, they all feel like the same entity created them even though times have changed. Do you receive a lot of push back from the people you work with?

Zakk: We had worked with like, two producers for the first 15-16 songs we put out. We were always worried that if we branched out and changed up production we would lose our sound. Maybe the producer was most of that sound. But, we’ve recently been working with Will Carlson and Cam Becker. Now, between all four producers, including Austin and Brian, we have like 80%- 90% of our sound is the same. You can still hear how they make a song sound in that, they’re the icing on top. I feel like even when there’s pushback, David always says “they’re our sixth member” and it feels like they aren’t taking anything away from our sound they’re just making it better.

DMM: I’m so glad you’ve been able to find such a solid group of people to work with. What has been the most rewarding/ “I made it” moment for you. If you all have different answers, that’s cool too.

Spencer: Mine was the Nightly/Knox tour last year. I think that might have been all of our answers, but that was unreal.

Zakk: There’s been a few, but I remember when we played Next Big Thing, that was probably the biggest crowd we had played to until that tour. People would learn our music ahead of time, before we had even been to cities like Seattle or Chicago. That blew my mind. You see the numbers on Spotify, but you don’t see it on social media necessarily. You don’t know if they’re actual listeners or oops, streamed this song. We went to San Francisco and someone was like “I had given up hope that you guys would ever tour to San Francisco because it had been so long since I found you guys.”  I was like– do you remember that?
Dan: Wasn’t it like they listened to “Bloodshot”?

Zakk: No, it was ‘Back to”!

Logan: “Back to”, yeah. It had been like 3 ½ years they’d been listening to us.
Zakk: We finally made it out there. That was definitely an “I made it” moment. Stuff like that blows our minds and we’re so so lucky that we get to do it and travel and people listen to our music. 

DMM: I couldn’t imagine a nicer group of people to have such good things happen to. I did see you guys are getting ready to tour again soon! What are your tour essentials?

Spencer: The van.

Zakk: We gotta rent a van, that’s an essential.

David: That’s like a one and all.

Dan: I’d say cheap socks from Target that you wear once then throw away. Number one essential.

Zakk: Yeah, it’d get real stinky real fast if you don’t.

David: I’d say portable chargers.

Logan: Wet wipes.
Dan: Oh, instant shower.

Zakk: He means cologne.

Dan: No, no, like dry shampoo. That is a life saver.

Spencer: The van is our hotel, our shower.

Zakk: Don’t say shower!
Spencer: Our tooth-brushing station. 

David: We really do live out of it for like two weeks at a time.

Zakk: Yeah, we grind it out. We don’t have a lot of hotels yet when we go out. We might get one on this upcoming tour. I think it’s nine days?
David: Two if we’re lucky.

Zakk: Two if we’re lucky! We’ll have to get like a Planet Fitness membership or something to sneak in another shower or two. It’s dirty but it’s what we gotta do to do what we love. 

DMM: Yeah, you gotta do what you gotta do to make it work.

Zakk: Yeah.

DMM: How do hometown shows, and even other Florida shows, compare to places you’ve never been before?
Zakk: Hometown shows are electric. This last one we had, I lost my voice and I was so raspy and I was like I’ve done everything I can and I just have to go out there. The adrenaline must have kicked in or something because everything went perfectly and it worked out. With out of town shows, I feel like until we hit the stage we’re terrified. Are people gonna be there? Are they going to know us? Are people gonna throw tomatoes? Are we gonna say the wrong city?
DMM: What about when you’re performing live and you’re comparing very different songs with very different vibes like “Nashville” and maybe, I don’t know, “Pressure”. Do you have a conscious switch in your mind of how to perform it differently or does it just come with rehearsal.

Zakk: If it’s a crowd that knows us it’s pretty easy. We do some crazy transitions in Tampa or a city we’ve been to a few times. We can switch up pretty quickly. Out of town, though, I think we’d be too scared to pull off something that crazy of a switch. If people know us we can play that ballad and then say we want people to jump and party again. I don’t know how we’d handle that with a crowd that doesn’t know us. 

David: So much of it is scripted, we would have decided that long before we hit the stage. So it’s like, better be right. You know?
Zakk: Yeah, we try to build in like “surprise songs” on tour. Like, we’ll do these three, then one or two we switch every night, then three more.So those six are chosen for the whole tour and we make sure they’re perfect. So if we’re night 3 and people don’t like– It happened with “Back To” it’s a little slower so crowds who didn’t know us we kinda… lost people’s attention so you want to bring them back as fast as possible. I think that’s why a lot of songs are around two minutes now, you can bring people back. You didn’t like that one, how about this one, really quickly!

DMM: Have you ever had a song that you expected to be perceived one way get like completely turned the other way?

[Group consensus of “Back To”]

DMM: Really?
Logan: We all loved “Back To” a lot and thought it was our best song when we put it out and it didn’t really get received in the same way. 

Zakk: Another big one, one of our biggest songs and we don’t know why is “Feelings”. I think it’s that it’s so different and unique as a song and that’s why it does well. No one has heard a song like that before. Right now it’s number two and we look at it like “how?” 

Dan: It’s a banger!
Zakk: I just mean it’s a song that we didn’t think, three years later, would be in the top five. It blows my mind. We did a March Madness and people– “Hopeless Romantic” beat “Attention” and we had DM after DM of people being like how could “Attention” lose? I demand a recount! We were like people voted for “Hopeless”! You should have voted!
David: It’s the like, least favorite song for Logan and I, it’s number two and we just have to deal with it.

Zakk: That’s crazy that it’s your least favorite.

David: One of my-

Logan: Worst three for me.

David: Bottom for me for sure.

Zakk: Haters. This goes back to like, the third or fourth question. Our sound– all of our songs are so different that even within the band there’s ones we like and ones we’re like eehh. We hit so many different sounds and have so many different tastes even within our own music. 

DMM: But I mean- it would be hard to have a lot of songs that you all love at the same level.

Zakk: Exactly. Do we all like “Fake Smile”?
David: I like that one.

Dan: Yeah.

Logan: I feel like we all feel the same way about “Attention” too.

Zakk: Apparently not! That’s with like twenty songs, I can’t imagine like Taylor Swift and having like… 190 songs how that must feel.

David: Well, that’s just her.

DMM: She can probably pick and choose more easily.

David: I’m saying.

DMM: For your up and coming projects, is there one you’re the most excited about that you can share?

Zakk: So we’ve been teasing three of our upcoming songs all at once.

DMM: I’ve noticed!
Zakk:I feel we’re all– we keep saying “I like this one the most” and the next day it switches. We’re split pretty even. We’re gonna have one of those out probably by the time this is out. It’ll be exciting, I guess I can just say it. We’re gonna have a song coming out called “Apartment” in about a week and a half.

David: We haven’t even officially announced it.

Zakk: It’ll probably be announced today or tomorrow.

DMM: It’ll definitely take me a minute to get this all typed out.

Zakk: I know! So I don’t want it to be like-

Dan: Go stream “Apartment!”
DMM: Absolutely! Absolutely go stream it!

Zakk: Stream “Apartment”! No, but like, we’ll announce it today or tomorrow. That’s song one and we’ve got two more that we’re working on getting released.

DMM: That’s so exciting!
Zakk: One right after the other.

DMM: You mentioned before how much the industry has changed, do you have any music industry icks?

Zakk: I guess the biggest thing is when there’s– Tiktok is a big thing and we wish it was something the artist could control more. It’s like when you play the lottery, you have no control if you win or not. With Tiktok, you have no control if people see your video or not. It sucks for smaller artists. For artists our size or smaller you have to be so lucky for people to even see your video. That always feels sucky and icky, you almost wish the old algorithms were back. Old Instagram was time related and everyone who looked around that time would see it, now if they don’t have your notifications on or go to your profile… they might never know you posted ever even if they follow you.

David: Piggybacking off of that, back in the day it was very album centric when you put out music. Now, because of going viral on TikTok, it feels like single after single after single. We try to keep that balance and keep everything cohesive, but it’s– we’re trying to put out singles all the time now. It is what it is, but it’s just about adapting to where things are now.

DMM: I’ve seen a lot of artists that do/did things like concept albums. I feel like that would be so much more difficult to do now.

David: Absolutely

Zakk: Something like “The Black Parade”, for that to come out today you’d have to be like Billie Eilish big. It’s hard even getting your name out there, never mind being a household name. Concept albums for a band in today’s day and age… I think Twenty One Pilots might have been the last one to do it. They still carry on that with current albums but I think they were the last ones to do a full concept album prior to becoming huge. They weren’t huge when Blurryface dropped.

Dan: P!ATD just did it right? And it flopped? Was that a concept album?
Zakk: That was a flop because Brendon Urie… wanted to do everything to tape. 

Logan: It sounded bad.

Zakk: I don’t even know if it was a concept album or not to be honest.

Dan: I think the concept was “vintage”.

David: I think Twenty One Pilots does it the best.

Zakk: They built up the lore. Waterparks’ Intellectual Property was a concept album but it still… it wasn’t like back in the day. American Idiot was a literal musical. Black Parade was a literal musical. 

David: I guess The 1975 kind of did it too. Obviously Taylor Swift.

Zakk: “Folklore” had characters but it was only for three or four songs.

David: You really don’t see it much anymore. 

Zakk: I miss it!

David: Does it count when Fall Out Boy did it with “Save Rock and Roll”?

Zakk: That was just music videos. I remember Patrick saying in an interview, like, Pete was like let’s make it a thing!

David: It’s hard to find nowadays.

Zakk: Even that… 11 years ago.

DMM: If the industry hadn’t changed so much, would that be something you’re interested in?
David: If we had the budget.

Zakk: If the music industry didn’t change we probably would still be putting out albums so we would have the budget to… I guess you’d need to be at a point in your career where you can have “throw away tracks”. Let’s use Trench by Twenty One Pilots. They have a track called Nico and the Niners which is just lore. There’s no pop sensibility to it. It’s a good song, but it isn’t the greatest song they ever put out. They were like we’re gonna throw away this song just for the lore, hard-core supporters will like it and the average person is gonna be like well what the hell is this? That is the key, I think, being able to say I’m putting this song out and it’s just for the lore. I think we could do it, but we’d need a good story. Maybe one day.

DMM: I think that would be sweet to see from you guys.

Zakk: Yeah?
DMM: For sure. I don’t want to take too much up of your time so I only have two questions left.

Zakk: This has been fun!
DMM: I, personally, haven’t interviewed anyone before so I didn’t know if the questions were okay.

Dan: Good job!

Zakk: You’re doing great.

DMM: Yay! In regards to your tour, though, what do you hope comes out of it? Is it the chance to play new music, see new faces, see familiar ones…?

Zakk: For me, I think it’ll be seeing people we’ve already seen  that we’ve met over the past year and a half. Going places like Chicago, we love coming back and seeing familiar faces. It always makes us feel special in Tampa but now we can do that in other cities as well. We’re so happy about that. Obviously meeting new people will be amazing too! There’s a lot of people, even since we left Chicago, were like “when are you coming back to Chicago?” and we’re like “We’re on the drive back! Where were you yesterday?” Plus, we’ll be playing two new songs and a couple other ones that we love to play.

Logan: Connecting with everybody. It’s exciting meeting everyone, including the artist Starletta (who they will be touring with), it will be cool connecting with him.

Dan: We’re excited to vibe.

Zakk: To vibe.

DMM: To vibe! 

Spencer: Live in the van once more.

Zakk: Yes, living in the van.

DMM: To end things off, how do you want to leave it with our readers? What do you want them to take away from this interview? Or maybe something I haven’t asked but you feel is important?
David: That’s a tough one.

Zakk: This is gonna sound a little cheesy but just keep following your dreams and– don’t laugh!
Dan: Don’t let your dreams be dreams.

Zakk: Don’t let your dreams be dreams, keep the main thing be the main thing! Is that what most dudebros would say? No, you’ve gotta keep pushing. We’ve been doing this, individually, like 15 years. Together, like six. Now that we’re getting on the road more and things like that, we’re having the time of our lives. Even if you’re just starting out and the mountain seems like a lot to climb, keep pushing. You never know where it’ll take you, even if it’s a different route than you’d expect, you are where you’re meant to be. Keep pushing.

DMM: I love that! We’re all so excited for the new music to come out and I can’t wait for everyone who reads this to stream “Apartment” since that’ll be out! If/when you do release an album soon just know I will be streaming immediately.

Zakk: Even if it’s a concept album.

DMM: Especially if it’s a concept album! Thank you guys so much for taking the time to do this.

Zakk: Absolutely!

Stream Apartment on Spotify or Apple Music and get ready for their new EP “Until You Were Gone” coming October 24th!