He goes “to me, the song makes the most sense when viewed through the lens of addiction.” And everybody responded to that like “omg TYLER what’s he addicted to??”
Like they’ve never heard that from him before.
There’s literally a whole song about going through cycles of addiction and what’s he addicted to, ladies and gentleman—
Doubt.
He’s addicted to doubting God. That whole bridge of the song is the literal point of the Bible verse James 1:6 “But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.”
It’s…it’s all over his songs. It’s all over that one interview with Apple Music where he explains he doesn’t know how to talk about his faith yet, so does he really believe it if he can’t talk about it, etc.
In Vignette he describes what he’s been doing over and over, the dark addictive thing, like this:
“Fresh off a binger in the woods
flesh, covered in bites
testing what is real, what is good,
Man, it’s been a long night.”
Break it down. Tyler chose to describe a location. Didn’t have to. But because he did, you can get something from that. He’s in the woods. Woods? Trees. “Why won’t you speak / Where I happen to be? / Silent in the trees / Standing cowardly.” Standing in the woods, out there alone, looking for something out of the ordinary and dramatic to happen, to alleviate his feelings, to give him proof that God exists.
That is the place he goes to wrestle with that.
Next line. His state is having flesh that is covered in bites. Mmkay, he’s used zombie imagery before. Heavydirtysoul: “Mindless zombies walking around with a limp and a hunch/ Saying stuff like, ‘you only live once’ /“ Zombies are people who don’t think about where life came from or where it’s going; they just shuffle around, not moving well through life, based on a ‘hunch (a feeling or guess based on no known facts.) They’re dead, pretending to be alive, mindless. That kind of crowd, or even that kind of mindset, has been chewing away at the songwriter. Getting covered by something so dark sounds a lot like the phrase “swallowed by the vignette.”
What’s covered in bites? Flesh. Only one other place where he’s used that word. Holding Onto You: “I’m taking over my body, back in control, no more shoddy / I’ve fought it a lot and it seems a lot like flesh is all I’ve got / not anymore, flesh out the door, swat /
I could say a lot about that song and the different meanings behind the word choice of “flesh,” but suffice it to say, it sounds just like Romans 7, (I don’t care, read all that scripture, it’s life-giving.)
“For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?"
The flesh is biblically at war with the Spirit, in a Christian. It’s the sinful urges and lifestyle, which have been defeated in Christ, but are still weighing us down and tempting us until He comes back. I’m not saying “doubt” is always a fleshly thing. I’m saying: addiction is always a fleshly thing—it’s laboring under the authority and control of something that is not Christ. Usually we are talking about addiction to a substance. But it can also be addiction to a mindset.
Doubt or ‘losing your faith’ or whatever can sound real romantic. But actually you know what, when you’re doubting, you get to stall. You get to say ‘well I’m not sure’ so you quit moving. You quit trusting, so you quit obeying. That aspect of it can be less daunting than the alternative—so it can be appealing. I don’t have to obey and do hard things if I’m not sure of the one giving orders. I can sit in uncertainty; that can be the slightly less scary hard-thing that I choose.
So. The flesh—the evil part of him that is already dead in Christ, but he keeps putting it on like a snake trying to fit in old shed skin—is what the zombies—the mindless, pretending to be alive mindset—are feeding on. And they’re doing all this while he’s out in the woods—where he normally goes to puzzle out whether or not God is who He says He is.
He’s putting back on that nasty old skin that doesn’t belong on him anymore. He’s going out where his only company is the undead, mindless-pretending-to-be-alive. And he’s doing what?
“Testing what is real, what is good.” Oh. Romans 2:12.
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
He’s using this phrase, but not like the Bible does. And that’s intentional. He uses the phrase incorrectly, to show how using it incorrectly is the problem.
He’s cutting out the fact that the testing is supposed to be for “discerning what is the will of God.” That’s the context, that’s the motive that is safe to base testing on. But he’s not operating in that correct, safe space. And he adds “what is real” to “what is good.”
When you take out “figuring out God’s will” but then you add in “what’s even real?” you’re saying, “I’m not sure God is even real, so nevermind about His will—let ME figure out what is good.” You’re not going to find “what is good” on those terms. Without Him, when He is in your category for ‘might not be real,’ when you remove Him from the equation, who’s to say what’s good? Anybody. Nobody. So “good” doesn’t exist. That’s zombie-thinking, right there. The absence of sense. Mindlessness.
Now factor in what I said above. That interview with Apple Music. “If I don’t know how to talk about it, do I really believe it?” Add in a dash of “Clear.” “Cleverly masking your words /“ Put in the whole entire character of Blurryface, who cares what everyone thinks and can’t be “clear.”
Vignette is just another chapter in the same old story. Tyler Joseph isn’t always 100% sure God is who He says He is. And at his worst, in his flesh, he cares more about what you think than he does the truth…so he can’t be clear about what he believes.
“Man, it’s been a long night.” Yeah. I bet it has.
There’s no hope in “gaining the strength to fight” if there’s no hope of victory. Not even the idea of it.
Because don’t you understand, that’s not hope. Hope is not blind. It isn’t “I just really wish things were different.” It’s “I know they will be.” Or even, “I know they could be, WHEN such-and-such happens.”
The bleakest moments in all my favorite stories are when the good guy lashes out and hits the bad guy across the face, because even though he can’t win, it feels good to fight back for a second—but then that lash-out becomes pathetic and sadder than ever when it’s over. Because when the momentary thrill is gone, you’re left with the hopelessness. The fact that that’s all he’ll ever have; the idea of winning. When in actuality “victory” is just some comfortable lie or mirage-like dream he indulges in every once in a while, but it’ll never be real.
I mean what the heck. It would be like if, in The Shawshank Redemption, nobody ever gets out. Nobody is ever freed.
It would specifically be like if Andy just keeps building his library and occasionally listening to music, hanging onto some “idea” of a life that is no longer real, but ultimately he dies in prison, a slave, forgotten, unjustly accused, unknown. Defeated. Yeah he kept living. Till he died. And what was the point?
But no, Andy escapes. Andy gets out. Even if it took most of his life to do it, he still did it. Because it was possible. Because he was never supposed to be there. Because it’s not true that “the darkness will always be with you and you’ll never truly defeat it, but it’s enough to keep going.”
No, it’s not! That sounds pretty, but it’s nonsensical. Thats the kind of thinking that made Brooks hang himself. He could make life livable with a comfortable lie; until he couldn’t.
If hope is the comfortable lie—if hope of defeating the darkness once and FOR ALL is a lie—then why bother? Why bother at all?
You only fight because there’s something worth fighting for. You only travel to reach the destination. That “it’s the journey, not the destination” does not apply.
I refuse to believe it. I will not buy into it. I know that the darkness ends. Ends, are you reading this? Ends permanently. I’m going to be free of my anxiety and depression and sickness, and dark thoughts, and self-focus, permanently, and when it happens, it won’t be because I’m dead, it’ll be because I’m alive forever.
I know it beyond the shadow of a doubt. My God said so. He trumps all your comfortable-lie-is-beautiful nonsense.
absolute worst thing it could’ve been was “and it cycles back to the beginning.”
no clear answers. no clear questions. no definitive statements. just more “guess I’ll always be insecure, and we’re not even sure that’s a bad thing, the only bad thing is killing yourself.”
I hope this isn’t the conclusion they’ve been claiming it is. Because that was no conclusion at all.
you know what else kind of sucked, nothing new or inspiring happened in the video. We got new plot info that amounted to: the antlers can make heat waves that kill the bishops and the neon gravestones are lightsaber weapons.
That’s it. Thats all.
We already knew Clancy and the Banditos were going to storm DEMA. The video just showed it happening. We already knew that vultures could be used to spy on people. The video just showed it happening. We already knew that committing suicide is bad, glorifying it is worse, and fighting it is good. The video just rehashed those things.
And it doesn’t help that we already saw a preview where the compelling visuals of those things already happened, so it’s not like the full video showed us much more.
Where is the break in the cycle? Where is the “actual life?” When does the Torchbearer do anything permanently helpful? Whats the end of Clancy’s story? “Back to the start” is not “the end of the story.”
I see people thanking them and acting all emotional that the story has concluded but nothing new happened, not to mention nothing conclusive. I might as well have re-watched Levitate.
If you strip the visuals down and the song away, the narrative in Levitate goes “Clancy gets to wear new clothes, we see more about what the Banditos are like, Clancy seems resolved to fight the bishops, but he gets snatched again and we’re left wondering if he’ll be okay.”
Literally the only thing separating this part of the story from Levitate is the antlers’ heatwave ability.
So I don’t understand you guys going “thank you so much twenty one pilots, that was incredible.” Okay yes it was pretty and they’re just as cool-looking as always. But that isn’t the ending.
but…and here comes my recurring “maybe next time” hope for them—
but they do love live shows. And Tyler has always expressed some kind of vague idea that he would rather communicate about the “real” questions in life through smaller, more intimate settings. (It’s a stretch to say a concert in an arena full of fans who are recording you on their phone is an “intimate setting,” but I guess it’s more intimate than what’s streamed or on the radio or on their official YouTube page.)
What I’m saying is, they might conclude the narrative onstage, during tour, like the skits they used to do. It would be in-character for them.
I just think they’ll do it in song form. And with his vague lyrics, will it ever be clear what defeats the Dark Thoughts, once and for all? You can be clear in a story. But he loves his multiples of meaning in his song lyrics.
absolute worst thing it could’ve been was “and it cycles back to the beginning.”
no clear answers. no clear questions. no definitive statements. just more “guess I’ll always be insecure, and we’re not even sure that’s a bad thing, the only bad thing is killing yourself.”
I hope this isn’t the conclusion they’ve been claiming it is. Because that was no conclusion at all.
you know what else kind of sucked, nothing new or inspiring happened in the video. We got new plot info that amounted to: the antlers can make heat waves that kill the bishops and the neon gravestones are lightsaber weapons.
That’s it. Thats all.
We already knew Clancy and the Banditos were going to storm DEMA. The video just showed it happening. We already knew that vultures could be used to spy on people. The video just showed it happening. We already knew that committing suicide is bad, glorifying it is worse, and fighting it is good. The video just rehashed those things.
And it doesn’t help that we already saw a preview where the compelling visuals of those things already happened, so it’s not like the full video showed us much more.
Where is the break in the cycle? Where is the “actual life?” When does the Torchbearer do anything permanently helpful? Whats the end of Clancy’s story? “Back to the start” is not “the end of the story.”
I see people thanking them and acting all emotional that the story has concluded but nothing new happened, not to mention nothing conclusive. I might as well have re-watched Levitate.
If you strip the visuals down and the song away, the narrative in Levitate goes “Clancy gets to wear new clothes, we see more about what the Banditos are like, Clancy seems resolved to fight the bishops, but he gets snatched again and we’re left wondering if he’ll be okay.”
Literally the only thing separating this part of the story from Levitate is the antlers’ heatwave ability.
So I don’t understand you guys going “thank you so much twenty one pilots, that was incredible.” Okay yes it was pretty and they’re just as cool-looking as always. But that isn’t the ending.
absolute worst thing it could’ve been was “and it cycles back to the beginning.”
no clear answers. no clear questions. no definitive statements. just more “guess I’ll always be insecure, and we’re not even sure that’s a bad thing, the only bad thing is killing yourself.”
I hope this isn’t the conclusion they’ve been claiming it is. Because that was no conclusion at all.
Listen, insecurity is self-focus. It’s hard to have, it’s sad to struggle with, it’s a bloody battle to fight against it—but that is still what it is. It’s you, tunneling your vision onto your flaws, then constructing your life and the way you interact with the outside world around hiding those flaws. Or, maybe you’re not hiding them—you’re just ordering your life so that you feel some control over the flaws. Or you’re not acknowledging them as flaws at all, you’re saying “flaws” but you’re treating them like “badges of identity, who I am, unique character traits I’ll always be dramatically associated with.”
That’s insecurity. You’re not secure in who you are, where your worth comes from, and what your purpose is, so you make it up for yourself. Whether that looks like hiding the flaws or pretending to own the flaws.
BUT. Then insecurity still controls you. One way or another—because you’re constantly fighting it with tools that don’t work, because they’re all based on you. Your opinion of yourself. Self-focus. And you can’t be trusted to maintain a sound, or even accurate opinion of yourself at all times. You’re the least objective observer of your own self.
But if you keep it, the rampant self-focus leads to deep darkness that you can’t find or feel the way out of. You can start thinking that you have no impact for good or bad (because you “impacting something” has become the dream) in life, so maybe you better have an impact in death.
What you really need is someone outside of you, who knows you perfectly and you can’t hide your flaws from them or fool them with overcompensation, to assign worth to you. And purpose. And because that person is objectively right about you, and loves you, they’re an anchor when your own opinion of yourself gets skewed–or when others who don’t know you skew it. Then you can rely on that anchor and stop focusing on yourself so much, because the anchor is there, He’s not going anywhere.
So here’s my take on Clancy, Trench, and the whole DEMA thing.
1. Who is Clancy?
The protagonist. The little red “you are here” embodiment of where Tyler Joseph is, in his own brain, as he goes through different headspaces. I don’t think he’s all of Tylerat once all the time, but for the purposes of this post he’s Tyler, in the same way that the little car emoji in your GPS is ‘you’ on the map.
The main thing about Clancy is that he has only a few characteristics.
Characteristic 1) He’s got a special gift.
It appears to be “writing,” at first, but then that’s expanded to “he’s good at using creativity.” You can tell, because when the Bishops don’t kill him even when he becomes a symbol of rebellion—which wasn’t really something he did on purpose—instead, they make him write for them. And later, that’s expanded to “good at using creativity,” because Clancy a) has been able to escape an inescapable city by performing and b) is the only character we’ve seen gifted with NED’s seizing antlers—which are literally “what grows out of the head of creativity.”
Characteristic 2) He doesn’t know what’s going on, and he’s never 100% sure what to do about it even when he does have a grasp of his situation.
This characteristic is important. Clancy is an instrument in other characters’ hands. He does choose to escape, but his resolve to stay out of DEMA is pretty shaky. When he escapes, he isn’t sure where he’s going. When he’s brought back, he’s not sure if he was actually brought back or if he gave up. When he is rescued the second time, it’s because he’s needed for something, not because planned it. When he’s captured the second time, it’s because he’s needed for something, not because he decided to go back. When he’s set free on the submarine, it’s because someone else planned to rescue him. When he starts the burning of DEMA, it’s because someone else gave him the antlers.
And the entire time, he’s sort of going back and forth as far as how he feels about it all. He definitely doesn’t like DEMA, but he doesn’t really know what else to put his trust in. He doesn’t know what the Banditos are planning well enough to take part in it. He’s “blown about by every wind.”
Until this album cycle. When he very definitively decides he is going to burn DEMA down, follow the plan of the Torchbearer, and use the gift he’s been given to do it. He even starts to understand what old dreams and feelings of attack were coming from. So there’s that.
Basically, Clancy is a character who grows and changes. He goes from “where am I and where should I be going?” to “I know where I’m going, even if I don’t know if I’ll make it or how to get there, and I’m going to take the steps I can.” Which is important, when the setting of “going somewhere” is Tyler’s psyche.
And with that:
2. What is DEMA?
It’s Tyler’s bad headspace. If Clancy’s there, he’s trapped in the headspace where dark thoughts run the show, and he easily slips into patterns that they lay out for him.
This is Biblical, too, this whole “separating parts of your mind,” instead of letting your thoughts run rampant. 2 Corinthians 10:5 is all about spiritual warfare, and the lies of this world and evil, trying to convince you of things that aren’t true, and how the anchor you can tie your thoughts down to is “Who Christ is, and What He says to Do.” By “tie the thoughts down to an anchor,” I mean, “take them captive.”
DEMA is a way of taking them captive, on a meta level. It’s the idea that you can isolate the part of your brain where it’s easiest for them to have free rein, and then it’d not go there.
But in the story, DEMA is characterized by grayness, stone, pointless routines, and the feeling of being trapped. When you’re in that place I mentioned above, mentally, where you’ve focused on yourself for so long that you don’t know what else there is and you feel totally numb, that’s what it feels like.
But there’s two other elements of DEMA that line up with what I was saying up above, about self-focus.
3. Who Are the Bishops and What is Vialism?
The Bishops are Dark Thoughts, and Vialism is the lie they draw the most power from spreading. If DEMA is just a place (the bad headspace) the Bishops are what live in that place, and Vialism is the big liethat keeps you there.
There are 9 Bishops (or 8, after it’s revealed that Keons isn’t really on their side.) The leader is Nicolas Bourbaki, but he doesn’t like it when you use his real name, he’d rather be called Blurryface. Actually, he’d prefer you not notice his name at all, but that’s another topic. Each of these Dark Thoughts controls a different segment of the Bad Headspace.
They hide their faces behind blurry gauze, and divide what little you can see of that with white and black paint. I think this is because Blurryface is named after the Bourbaki group, who were mathematicians trying to prove something about God through their systems—and that’s a very black-and-white, exacting thing to try and do. But at the same time, while they’re so coldly examining God, the Dark Thoughts don’t want anybody to be able to see anything clearly about Dark Thoughts. Anyway.
The Bishops don’t want anyone leaving the dark headspace. And Vialism is a “religion” where you believe that the only way to “paradise” is by killing yourself. Once the citizens of DEMA kill themselves, the Dark Thoughts convince everyone else that this was an amazing thing to do, call the dead people “Glorious Gone,” and celebrate it. All the while, they use antlers to control the dead bodies as part of that plan.
I think the concept is so cool that we miss how wonderfully simple it is. It’s just this:
The dark thoughts make you believe that you can have no impact unless you’re dead. They don’t care if they’re magnifying your flaws and telling you to accept them, or if they’re magnifying your flaws and telling you you’ll never be worth anything because of them. As long as it leads to the same conclusion: “So you won’t make an impact. Unless you die.” And they go, “see, look how impactful it was when these other people killed themselves. What a stir they made. What a memory they left behind. That could be you; nothing else you do is getting you that.” That’s what puppeting dead bodies and calling it “glorious” is for. That’s the lie that the whole system, the routines, the atmosphere of the dark headspace, is reinforcing.
That’s the Bishops, and Vialism. Of course because they’re getting so climactic about it, we should look carefully at two:
3.b Who is Keons?
I don’t know for sure. He is either representative of music-as-a-temporary-diversion, because he is a Dark Thought that manages to be helpful (like putting lyrics about your insecurities into fleeting songs) or, my most recent understanding, is that he is part of a representation of God. Or, if you prefer, “Someone Outside of You Who Wants to Break Into the Dark Headspace You’re Comfortable In and Get You Out.”
The main point is, he is characterized as warm, steadfast, personal, in cahoots with creativity, and sacrifices himself for Clancy’s escape. Tells us two things. First, that he’s different from all the other Bishops, who are abrupt, cruel, and distant. Second, that he dies. (Unless he comes back somehow before the Lore is over, which would just reinforce my idea that he’s part of the representation of God.)
3.c Who is Nico?
Nico is Self-Focus personified. He was initially “Blurryface = Insecurity.” But remember, we talked about how “insecurity” is just a gateway word leading to “self-focus,” ultimately. Just like how the character “Blurryface” was the surface-read of Nico, and Nico is “his real name.”
Wrap the name of a scientist who thinks everything through analytically (not just himself, but God) around the name that literally means “I don’t want you to see me clearly/see my flaws,” and you get “Self Focus.”
Of course everyone wants to say, “Nico is Clancy, too.” Because “Blurryface is part of Tyler.
Yeah. Self-Focus is still you. It’s you focusing on you.
So yeah, you can say Nico/Blurryface is Clancy/Tyler, that somehow Clancy was the thing he was trying to escape and fight all along, etc. Sure. Say that. It goes with my take, actually. Whether Clancy is his own thing and has been imprisoned several times by Nico, or whether Clancy is a vessel for Nico and he doesn’t even know it, the “Nico is Self-Focus” still exists.
And how can Clancy defeat Nico? When he’s never been able to before? When he might even, possibly, be Nico?
Well, the short answer is, Clancy can’t. Just like you can’t stop focusing on yourself by intensely thinking about how to be less self-focused 😅 because that’s still self focus.
Let’s talk about who can defeat Self-Focus.
4. Who is the Torchbearer?
I personally believe Torchbearer is representative of God. He doesn’t pull Clancy out of DEMA and then carry him off to a happy meadow. He rescues Clancy, and then he sends him back to get more people out of the dark headspace. Just like God doesn’t save you and then beam you immediately into eternity and out of this present world. Just like, in March to the Sea, “then You put me back in my place / so I might start another day.”
Also:
The whole plan is Torchbearer’s.
Even in captivity, he’s with Clancy, inexplicably, and the Bishops can’t get rid of him.
He’s carrying fire, which is kind of “a baby sun” and the sun has always been representative of God in twenty one pilots stuff. Also, fire is real, natural light, as opposed to the neon glow that the Bishops wave around.
He’s the leader.
He’s doing all of the rescuing.
Tyler said he has the ability to guide—which is literally the whole point of creating the world of Trench, to navigate your headspace’s, so why wouldn’t the Clancy character be the one guiding—because you can’t guide yourself, you need someone who knows your head better than YOU DO.
Tyler said there are three of him. Like the Trinity.
Now. Torchbearer could just be representative of someone who knows Tyler’s brain really well and can remind him of truth. A good friend. His best friend. But you know what? That doesn’t account for all the above imagery.
5. How will it End?
Clancy has gone from trying to figure out what’s going on to feeling like he knows what’s going on—he’s taking on a leadership role, and he wants to kill Nico and destroy the dark headspace. But this whole thing is about a cycle “Clancy can’t escape.” And there are theories that he’s inextricably linked to Nico. And focusing on your self-focus can’t defeat your self-focus.
Besides, the whole Blurryface album was a cycle of “I’m messed up and I know it —> But if anyone else knows I’m messed up they’ll reject me —> Someone needs to remind me that I’m unconditionally loved.”
Tear in my Heart is about his wife (from the outside) beating his insecurity up and taking what’s inside his heart (good and bad) and violently pulling it to the outside.
The Judge is about needing someone who knows him and has more power than him to pull him out of the cycle. Same thing with Not Today. Same thing with Goner.
Clancy cannot save himself. Clancy can only “save” himself by accepting that someone else needs to save him. Only in that sense. Meanwhile, someone else has to save him. Because someone else is what the cycle was missing. Insecurity balks at vulnerability.
So what I think will happen is, Clancy will think he can defeat Nico himself. In fact, that was part of Torchbearer’s plan. Clancy will climb the tower by himself, thinking it’s his job to kill Nico. It won’t work. They’ll either mutually destroy each other, or Clancy will try to destroy Nico only to find that he can’t do it, or Clancy will get straight-up defeated by Nico. Could be because Nico can seize him. Could be because Nico and Clancy are linked and Clancy can’t figure out how to kill him when that’s happening. Could be because Nico is just stronger than him. Either way, he never should have tried to do it himself.
But actually, all Clancy can do is die. Or get defeated. And when Clancy’s down, the Torchbearer can save the day.
Because the only solution to self-focus is dying to yourself. Realizing you can’t do it, you’re in no way the solution. Then resurrecting to live for something that is NOT YOU. No longer considering yourself. So insecurity is dead. Because the self you used to focus so hard on is being totally taken care of by God, so you don’t have to focus on it anymore. That’s God’s plan. That’s a Christian principle, that’s the Gospel. And they’re Christians.
And so help me, they said they’d conclude the story this time. He promised this was his battle! They’re going to say what they believe, this time!
Twenty One Pilots is the only band I can definitively say is my favorite. They’re in a different league than all the other bands or artists rattling around in my brain, close to the same way C.S. Lewis is in a league of his own in my brain when it comes to storytellers. Theres another ask I answered on my blog where I talked about why and how—I’ve loved them for twelve years. I’ll put a whole ramble about them under the cut if you want to hear more about that.
I love Kings Kaleidoscope. Same types of topics as Twenty One Pilots, but with more overt Christianity and worship. So much as I prefer and love TøP, I’ll always recommend Kings first.
I also love the Gray Havens for all the allegories and Lewisian imagery. And Sarah Sparks’ Into the Lantern Wastes, for the same reason! Some of my favorite songs right now are by Gable Price and Friends. My easy listening is Needtobreathe and The Oh Hellos!