Culture
‘The song is king’: inside Dance Gavin Dance’s creative process
By: Bradley Cunningham
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LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (WOUB) – Formed in Sacramento, California, in 2005, Dance Gavin Dance has spent two decades developing a post-hardcore style while incorporating elements of progressive rock, funk, and other genres. The band entered a new era with its 2025 album, Pantheon, its first full-length release featuring longtime guitarist and vocalist Andrew Wells as its lead clean vocalist alongside Jon Mess. The shift followed Wells’ years of contributing guitar and vocals to the group and brought a more collaborative approach to the band’s vocal writing.
On September 19, WOUB’s Bradley Cunningham spoke with Wells and founding drummer Matt Mingus at Louder Than Life. The conversation explored how the band’s varied influences shape its songwriting, how its creative process has evolved, and how collaboration has become increasingly central to its music. Wells and Mingus also discussed the band’s next album and its interest in expanding the world surrounding Dance Gavin Dance beyond recorded music.
Bradley Cunningham: I’ve always wondered about the creative process with you guys. You guys pull from a lot of influences, right? Is there a genre or a song or something that inspires you more than other ones when you’re creating new music?
Matt Mingus: You know, it’s definitely a mix. I don’t limit it to any song or one genre inspiring me. It just goes song by song for me, at least. But I definitely grew up in a band and school band, so I have some jazz influence. I always try to put a little flair on, you know? Instead of just playing like straight-through drumbeats and whatnot.
Andrew Wells: I think the coolest part about Dance Gavin Dance is that all of us have different influences. For me, it’s R&B and a lot of pop music for my melodies and my arrangements. Our guitar player likes the most obscure, weird niche music you could think of. Everybody listens to a little bit of different things. And it makes this mesh of what DG is.
Cunningham: What does that look like behind the scenes? Are you guys denying influences that may not work, or are you working to make it work?
Mingus: A lot of the time, I think that’s part of the fun. To make it work. If stuff’s a little weird, we think, ‘What can we do to make this happen?’ And not overthink stuff and trust our first instincts, you know? And if a song doesn’t make it on an album, it’s not the end of the world. We don’t lack the creative flow to keep writing and writing.
Wells: I think that’s a strength of ours. As well as the sheer volume we can write together. It’s very collaborative. It’s very open to discussion. The song is king, so if something doesn’t work. There’s no harm, no foul. No one takes it personally. That’s always: keep writing. We’ll write more stuff. It’s like there’s never a limit to how much we get.
Cunningham: Is there a genre you’ve avoided?
Wells: Probably country music a little bit. I really like country music, but I would say for this band, it just does not really work—also, anything with acoustic guitars. Our guitar player despises acoustic. Anything indie singer-songwriter, like, slow tempo. He hates that stuff. He avoids that type of music.
Cunningham: This one is for Andrew, actually. This recent album, that was your first go at lead clean vocals. How did that change the creative process for you guys?
Wells: Dramatically. I’ve been contributing guitar and vocals to the band since 2015. Since Mothership [album]. I’d already been integrated in a lot of different ways, and that ramped up with some singles on our last album with our previous singer. So, Pantheon was like a big shift in terms of that collaborative side.
We wrote all the vocals together while we were on tour with Falling in Reverse with Ronnie [Radke], and we were in a bus. We were on tour for about a month. We wrote and demoed all the vocals for that record together. It was the first time in the band’s history we’d ever done that with the vocals, whereas John, John, and Will in the back lounge every day were writing melodies, writing lyrics, and collaborating on every song.
And then by the time it was done, when we got in the studio, John and I just still were in that collaborative mode of just getting the best out of each other, the best out of both of us. I was super happy with how that turned out. And then with this new record we just finished, it was even more collaborative, but to the next level where we let each other just be like, write our own stuff, but then hit ideas back and forth and like, collaborate on concepts more than anything.
He let me do my thing melodically. I let him do his thing rhythmically. But conceptually we think, ‘oh well, what should this song be about? Like what? You know what? What imagery could we evoke? What narrative could we put in place here?’ And again, historically, that just was never the case for Dance until recently. I mean, historically, the vocalists rarely collaborated. Rarely. Like, yeah, we stayed in the same location, but we were kind of all separated. We just did our own things. Maybe we would kick some ideas together, but it was mostly separate. Now it’s like every idea we’re running by each other and just making sure it works.
Cunningham: What can fans look forward to in the future? What’s on the horizon?
Wells: Oh, man. We have the best Dance Gavin Dance record of all time.
Mingus: Yeah, a new album coming out. So, we’ll start rolling out singles for that. Hopefully soon. And then, then we have an Australian tour coming up and then, hopefully, more tours coming next year.
Wells: I’m unbelievably stoked on how it turned out. We’ve got a lot of great merch lined up and a lot of cool opportunities for fans. We’re always really great with the VIP items, too. We’ve got board games and all sorts of stuff.
Cunningham: So, you guys are exploring a lot of activations with your albums. I think that’s exciting as a fan now more than ever to have something physical.
Mingus: We want to keep pursuing that for our fans. To keep world-building and give them things to participate in.
Cunningham: Build a universe with the art.
Mingus: Yeah, absolutely. We have been throwing around the idea of doing some movie or something. So, we’ll see what comes.