Dear Seattle On The Creative Inspirations Behind New Album ‘TOY’

Dear Seattle are gearing up to loose their hotly anticipated third album TOY on Friday, 17th January. Billed as an emphatic 12-track collection of relatable alt-rock anthems meditating on “love, loss, addiction, nostalgia, and every salient moment of life”, the forthcoming record features previous beltable punk singalongs ‘Say What You Want’, ‘Counting Hours’, ‘Evergreen’, ‘Sungazer’, ‘idc’ and ‘Nothing’s Stopping Me Now’.

In the lead-up to release day, lead vocalist Brae Fisher sat down with Music Feeds to dive into some of the surprising creative inspirations that fuel the quartet’s third LP. Read his words down below.

Dear Seattle – ‘Say What You Want’

1. TAYLOR SWIFT

Brae Fisher: With the process of this record, we wanted to pull apart other music, rather than just going in and seeing what happens. We wanted to be a bit more surgical with learning about songwriting, really dissecting other incredible songs to see what makes them so good, and seeing if we could replicate something like that, and/or use different things that we’ve learned from other artists. There were so many different artists I was listening to at the time, so much so that it’s hard to synthesise down into all of them, but I distinctly remember sitting in the studio with our producer Fletcher [Matthews] and listening to a bunch of Taylor Swift. For me personally: Taylor Swift? I get it. It’s not my thing, but I get it, and I can appreciate that the songwriting itself is unbelievable. So I enjoy it and I am a fan in that way. 

At the time, listening to Taylor Swift I was like: this is the pinnacle of songwriting in so many different ways, if you’re talking about pop music. We started looking into things like what she’s doing with vocal melodies or phrasing, those kinds of things. Fletcher and I sat there and dissected different Taylor Swift songs and pulled out vocal melodies to see why they were so catchy, and how choruses could just be so constantly engaging from start to finish. We took a lot of inspiration from that, and kind of built that into our style so that it still sounds like Dear Seattle on TOY, but it also has an element being an earworm. It sticks with you and it hits in a certain way. So funnily enough, I can’t believe I’m saying this in an interview setting, but Taylor Swift is definitely a big one for this list.

2. WILL YIP

On this record, we also really wanted to step back into our roots, of what we grew up listening to. In that vein, a huge influence was the entire discography of Will Yip. Will is one of our favourite producers from the States, he’s worked with bands like Citizen and Turnstile, he’s worked with Turnover and so many different bands. All of that stuff is what we all grew up listening to, and it really inspired us to be a band in the first place, especially for our first EP, which is where it all started for us in terms of a career.

We were listening to heaps of Will’s stuff, and we wanted to step back into it and capture energetically what it makes you feel when you listen to that sort of music. We consider ourselves a band that is live-focused, the energy at shows is a big part of Dear Seattle, and we are very focused on community and making sure that there’s a place where people can come and enjoy music and feel safe, and meet other like-minded people who like the same music as you. That’s how we got into it ourselves, and maybe our fans might go on to start their own bands as a result! That has always been a big focus for us, and stepping back into that world, to those bands who grew out of the punk rock DIY ethos and small sweaty shows; it was all community-focused and it had that ethos, and when you listen to the music – you can hear that in it, you can hear that the music has been made to be heard live and you can’t help but air drum or bang your head along to it when you’re listening to it. 

We wanted to inject that back into Dear Seattle music. I think for our last record, because COVID was happening when we were doing it, live music wasn’t really a focus at the time. We weren’t even thinking about how it would translate live, and that felt like a missing element to us. It didn’t have that same thing for us personally. Coming into TOY, big influences were Will’s work with Citizen and Turnstile; and honestly and weirdly enough, old Dear Seattle was also a big creative director for TOY, which brings me to the next inspiration.

3. EARLIER DEAR SEATTLE

I think at this point in a career when you’ve got quite a lot of songs out, you can see across different records which ones really connect with people. You really start to get an idea of what your audience is and why they appreciate your band, as well as why they like the songs that they do. We did refer to that a lot making TOY, and that was probably the strongest driving force for this record to be honest. I think as well, the way that Fletcher works, he doesn’t really like to have references all that much. And I agree with that personally, if you have too many external references, you can start to replicate rather than make something unique. So we really just tried to stick as closely to ourselves as possible, and be like: what is Dear Seattle, and what makes this record “us” entirely? That was a big director for what we wanted to do with TOY, as well as what we didn’t want to do. Self-reflection in general is a big part of my life, so why not do it as part of the creative process as well! Being able to go back and be honest with yourself about what you did that you’re proud of, as well as what you did that you’re not that proud of…that’s such an important part of being an artist and growing as an artist. 

4. BLOODHOUND GANG

One other thing that I distinctly remember listening to when we were making TOY is Bloodhound Gang. I don’t know what it is about that band, but personality-wise, they’re just so unbelievably infectious and their music is incredible. A lot of the time, you almost forget how good the music is because of how funny the lyrics are. But there is such a strong personality from that band. I remember listening to them over and over again, and like we did with Taylor Swift, again unpacking what it is that makes their music so infectious, where you listen to it and you can’t help but love it. Then when we were going into trying to make something that felt like “us”, it was like: ok, what’s our personality, and what’s the most, for lack of a better word, infectious part of Dear Seattle’s personality? And how can we maximise how much we focus on that in this album? 

I just love Bloodhound Gang so much. They’re so weird and awesome, and they helped a lot in terms of synthesising a bit of Dear Seattle personality. But they also helped me realise that when you listen to a band like Bloodhound Gang, the magic seems like it all comes from the lyrics and stuff like that. But so much of it is in the music, and it goes so unnoticed.

Dear Seattle 2025 Album Launch Party Tour Dates

• Thursday 16 January 2025 – The Baso (Abyss), Canberra
• Friday 17 January 2025 – La La La’s, Wollongong
• Saturday 18 January 2025 – Crowbar, Sydney
• Sunday 19 January 2025 – Hamilton Station Hotel, Newcastle – SOLD OUT

Tickets on sale now here

Further Reading

Dear Seattle Share New Single ‘Sungazer’

Dear Seattle: The Five Biggest Signs of Growth on New Album ‘Someday’

Dear Seattle Return With New Single ‘In My Head’