STS9 Pushes Creative Boundaries With New Album and Tour

After a creatively dense 2024 album cycle with Chromalight, STS9 ended 2025 with Human Dream, a record filled with acoustic momentum built through speed, immersion and road-tested perspective.

“To really get into the thick of the idea on the new album was amazing,” says guitarist Hunter Brown. “Recording all that music in two months, playing it for the first time — that was big for us. That’s something we normally don’t do.”

That compressed creative process didn’t just shape the 2025 release; it altered how the band listens to itself.

“Anytime you work on a piece of music and take it on tour, you’re going to come back to it differently,” Brown says. “Hearing it in a way you haven’t heard before definitely helped inspire Human Dream.”

The result is a project shaped as much by reflection as by forward motion. The band is currently supporting Human Dreams on tour, which makes its way to Denver for three shows this weekend: at Mission Ballroom on Friday, January 23; Gates Concert Hall on Saturday, January 24; and Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom on Sunday, January 25.

“Colorado is one of those places where we push opportunities and create realms,” says drummer Zach Velmer. “The sheer amount of response and excitement that comes from a Denver crowd means we always have to be on our toes and keep it creative.”

That relationship between band and audience continues to influence how STS9 designs its most ambitious performances. Rather than defaulting to familiar rooms, STS9 approached this run with the intention of choosing venues that would allow it to expand on the creative concepts it has been evolving over the last five years.

“So much consideration goes into it,” Velmer says. “How do we want to show up creatively?”

While multiple venue options surfaced, the band ultimately landed on spaces that offered room to push ideas rather than repeat them.

“We’ve never played Mission Ballroom or Cervantes’,” Velmer notes. “There were a plethora of other options, but these were the spaces we thought we could really push that creativity.”

That mindset extends into STS9’s stripped-down Axe the Cables performances, which continue to evolve years after their introduction.

“We’ve been thinking about the Axe the Cables show we wanted to bring back to Denver for a couple years now,” Brown says. “It’s something we want to put more energy into for 2026 and 2027, it’s something we really want to develop.”

The return to Gates Concert Hall carries particular weight. “We’ve done Axe the Cables at a few different venues now, and it’s a whole different beast since the last time we were there,” Brown says. “We were excited to go back into this incredible venue where we had one of our most memorable shows ever — to return anew with fresh ideas on the same concept all these years later.”

STS9’s return to Gates Concert Hall marks its first performance there since 2009. The venue’s intimacy and acoustic clarity make it an ideal space for revisiting ideas with renewed perspective, grounding Human Dream in both history and forward motion.

The new album reflects a shift toward presence rather than abstraction. While earlier album releases leaned heavily into experimentation, the new album prioritizes texture, space and immediacy.

“It made the approach much different and took chances on things we wouldn’t have in the past,” Brown explains. “A lot of the new stuff is all over the place, which is really good.”

The studio process played a major role: “The different gears and how we created it in our studio created new air and texture around the songs,” he says, adding that analog audio engineering shaped the album’s mosaic.

“All of the albums we appreciate from the ’60s to the ’80s with that analog sound really inspired a lot of the tracks,” Brown says. “You get a little bit of grit and more of a tape feel. We wanted the album to live in that world and  not in a digital, distorted world.”

The rhythms channeled through the percussion on Human Dream aren’t about reinvention as much as alignment. “Nothing rhythmically was drastically different,” Velmer says. “It was more about listening to the energy and where things wanted to go.”

That sensitivity shifts between studio and stage.“Hunter and I would talk about how this feels energetically in the studio versus being in front of thousands of people,” he continues. “Where’s the pocket in the crowd? How can the melody soar over that?”

For STS9, the guiding force remains responsiveness and allowing the music to do what it wants to do in the moment.

“The energy is so prevalent when you let the music do the thing it wants to do,” Velmer says.

STS9 plays Mission Ballroom, 4242 Wynkoop St, Friday, January 23; Gates Concert Hall, 2344 East Iliff Avenue, Saturday, January 24; Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom, 2637 Welton Street, Sunday, January 25. Tickets are available via the venues’ websites.