[Cover photo credit to Mario Luna]

Last month, Los Angeles-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Nick Flessa returned to the world of Alt-Country and Americana with the announcement of new album, A Different Kind of Energy, out April 17th, 2026, via Anxiety Blanket Records. 

On this fully instrumental collection, Flessa communicates by “conveying psychic landscapes of many latitudes.”

Flessa has shared the project’s second single, “The Terror, The Traitor and The Tastemaker,”, which draws on his background in film and literature, telling stories through sound alone.

He says:

The Terror, The Traitor and The Tastemaker achieves some of my favorite moments from this session and record. It starts in a sparse, ambient nighttime mode that drew inspiration from certain Yes guitar intros, albeit with somewhat less virtuosic execution. The build sections are emotional and soft, with an almost new-age tinge that sometimes reaches an ecstatic place; their hesitancy eventually cascades into a lurching, swampy, drone-metal riff that stomps through the track with destructive swagger.

For the new record, Flessa found inspiration “in the vastness of certain forms of California visual and conceptual art, and other mediums that emphasized light and landscape.” Acquiring a small cabin in the high desert town of Wonder Valley gave him time to sit “in profound spaciousness.” It was in Wonder Valley that he started writing new instrumental pieces informed by that space.

The album was eventually fleshed out back in L.A. with many of the same players who had contributed to his 2024 album, The Politics of Personal Destruction. After some time working some of the new song ideas into live sets while they were still in sketch-like states, Flessa and crew recorded the entire album quickly over just a few days.