Thundering out of the mountains of Colorado, the Velveteers strip rock and roll back to its most primal elements—the riff, the rhythm, the snarl—and rebuild it in their own image. On their long-awaited debut album, the Dan Auerbach-produced Nightmare Daydream, two drummers on a conjoined set pound out heavy beats behind a guitar hero with the unbridled charisma of Elvis, the experimental taste of St. Vincent, the exhortative strut of T. Rex, and the witchy swagger of Stevie Nicks. “All those acts have been big influences on us,” says frontwoman Demi Demitro, “but our goal has always been to be a mix of everything. We don’t want to sound like a band from a different time. We want to sound like a band that’s right here right now—in this very moment.”

“I instantly dug them,” says Auerbach. “They’re amazing live, and their videos are so creative. And they just sound so powerful. Any time you doubletrack drums on a record, it’s going to sound so heavy. Then you put that together with this baritone guitar player who is so unique, and it’s so bombastic. There’s nothing like them.”

It’s taken The Velveteers a long time to get to this moment, but that’s by design. When they started the band in 2014, fifteen-year-old Demi and fourteen-year-old drummer Baby made the decision that they wouldn’t release an album until they felt ready. While other bands they knew rushed into the studio, they kept honing their chops, sharpening their craft, and figuring out what kind of band the Velveteers were. “It took so many years of playing live shows to realize what we wanted to do as a band,” says Baby. “It took years of trying on different identities before we fell into one that felt like us.”

As kids in Boulder, they absorbed as much music as they could. Demi’s father was an Elvis impersonator, and she would listen in as he recorded covers in his office studio. Her mother ran a theater company and enlisted her daughter to play parts big and small. Those early onstage experiences helped make her comfortable in front of an audience, but she soon rebelled by picking up a guitar. “It felt like this whole world opened up for me,” she says. “In musical theater there’s a director telling you what you need to do and how you need to play the character. Playing guitar and writing songs allowed me to be my own director and find my own voice.”

She obsessed over her guitar, practicing nine hours a day and neglecting schoolwork to develop a playing style that is heavy but agile, theatrical but nuanced, grounded in rock history but wholly idiosyncratic. Eventually she joined forces with Baby and they jammed endlessly in the rehearsal space Baby’s father built in the family garage. They made sure those six years counted, which meant working out their sound, writing countless songs, and ignoring all their doubts. “All creative people have this thing in their head—this evil voice—that tries to make them feel bad about their work,” says Demi. “I sit down every day and write as much as I can. Sometimes that voice tells me I should hate what I’ve created, but I had to learn to shun that voice.”

With every song they wrote and every show they played, the Velveteers developed a reputation around Colorado for their rip-roaring performances full of sweat and noise, chaos and catharsis. They opened for local heroes Rose Hill Drive and played the dreaded first slot on a four-band bill headlined by Deap Vally. That L.A. band was so impressed they invited the Velveteers along for a UK tour. Along the way the duo became a trio with the addition of Jonny Fig, who plays drums alongside Baby as well as whatever other instrument is put in front of him.

One day near the end of that six years, they got the kind of call that makes you think someone is playing an elaborate prank. Dan Auerbach had seen some of the live clips and DIY videos they had posted and wanted to talk to them about signing to his Easy Eye Sound label. In addition, he invited them to his studio in Nashville, where he would produce their debut. The Velveteers’ patience had paid off, but their work was far from over. “We practiced for months, drilling every song every day,” says Baby. “Our goal was to do a new demo for each song every day, then see what was missing or what was extraneous.” When the pandemic delayed the sessions, they used that extra time to rehearse even more.

By the time they arrived in Nashville, they had every song down tight, which you can hear on the ferocious roar of opener “Dark Horse” and the non sequitur swagger of “Motel #27.” To emphasize the spontaneity of their playing, they used first and second takes and ignored the evil voice that told them they needed fifty more tries to get it right. “They were a well-oiled machine when they got here,” says Auerbach. “The session was just banging from start to finish. We were searching for the right natural feel, and they were so genuine and open. They’re really true artists— completely unafraid.” In Auerbach they found a producer who could coax out their best performances while letting them be themselves. “He wasn’t trying to mold us into what he thought we should sound like,” says Demi. “He liked what we were doing, and most of the songs are exactly how we wrote and practiced them.”

A few songs, however, were new. Demi co-wrote the kiss-off “Charmer And The Snake” (“You think you’re the charmer, but you’re really the snake!”) with Auerbach just days before the recording session, which proved a challenge for the pair of drummers. “Jonny and I practice a lot to get our double drum parts down,” says Baby. “That song was written on acoustic guitar, but Dan wanted both drummers on it. We only had a little time to work things out, which was really intimidating. But we ended up using the first take. We just had to trust that all the hard work we had done was paying off.”

For all its monster riffs and rock-and-roll attitude, Nightmare Daydream is ultimately about balance: between hard work and spontaneity, between rehearsal and risk, between the past and the future. It’s an album full of big moments, made by a band that strives to remain open to every opportunity, whether creative or professional. “We don’t have any preconceived notions of what we sound like,” says Demi. “It’s not like we’re a rock band so we have to do what a rock band does. We want to try things we’ve never tried before. We want to go off in directions that we might not have ever considered. At heart we’re just a band trying to make the best music we can, whatever that sounds like.”