Four-piece alt-rock outfit Them Heavy Stones grew out of the ashes of a former project and a former life, according to principal songwriter Aaron Hanson. Following a divorce, a job falling apart, and the dissolution of a former band with fellow members Ben Sawyer and Micheal Clausen, Hanson says songwriting came to him organically for the first time in late 2024, and Them Heavy Stones were officially born.
“I haven’t really previously been a songwriter, but [the songs] just kind of started falling out of me as I was picking up the pieces and building my life back,” Hanson said. “It just started flowing out, and so everything from this album was pretty much from then on, and I was simultaneously rebuilding my life, and rebuilding the band, and writing music and bringing it to these guys.”
In Them Heavy Stones, Sawyer and Hanson switched roles from their previous band, with Hanson on guitar and Sawyer on bass. The Fort Collins band went on to connect with guitarist Marcin Kruszynski through a post in a Facebook musicians’ group, and Kruszynski says the band’s overall vision, as described in that post, was exactly what he had been looking for in a project.
“Everything [in the post] was just right up my alley, everything that I was looking for, as far as where I want to go musically,” Kruszynski recalls.
Them Heavy Stones released their first single, “Quicksand Highway,” alongside a music video in April 2025, before playing their first show at that year’s Taste of Fort Collins festival.
The band has since released several other singles, all of which will appear on its 11-track debut album, Somewhere After Yesterday, out independently this month. The band is also playing an album release show at The Moxi on December 11 to celebrate.
The album was recorded and mixed by Van VerHoeven of B-Normous Productions out of Milliken, Colorado. Its most recent singles include the rock and roll anthems “Make It Better” and “Nothing to Lose.” The release also includes four brand-new tracks, and the full album will be remastered by Finland-based mastering engineer Miro Kiiski of Miro Mastering.
According to Hanson, Clausen said recording with VerHoeven was the “easiest time he’s had tracking drums,” adding that everything in the process went really smoothly.
The band describes its songwriting approach as a fairly collaborative one, with Hanson bringing the bones of each song to the band before they all contribute ideas and try them out together. Hanson says he tries to “consider every single idea,” adding that he values the band’s flexibility in group songwriting over rigidity or a need to stick to a certain vision.
“It’s nice and refreshing to be part of a project where everyone that has an idea and it’s all you know heard by everyone else, we at least give it a try,” explains Kruszynski. “Sometimes it works out, but when it doesn’t, that’s okay too. But at least we were all kind of excited to try something to see if we could make that song a little better.”
While Them Heavy Stones are unmistakably a guitar-rock band, drawing from influences such as Queens of the Stone Age, Arctic Monkeys, and The Black Keys, Hanson says he didn’t want to stick to one sound for Somewhere After Yesterday.
“My vision for this album was to keep it as diverse as possible, and not just stick to one style through the entire thing,” Hanson explains. “I wanted it to be kind of different than anything else that people have heard coming out.”
As such, Hanson played a number of non-guitar instruments on the album, and the band enlisted a cellist for new track “I’m All In.”
“I wanted to make sure that it was multi-instrumental, so that’s why you hear harmonica, and you hear synthesizer, and you hear electric mandolin, and those are all just me kind of doing that stuff,” he adds.
Most of the songs, including the seamlessly blended pair of closing tracks “Flowers” and “The Island,” still feature a heavy dose of hard rock guitars, backed by hard-hitting rhythms from Sawyer and Clausen. The band also made a few last-minute tracklist changes, including moving “They’ve Got Your Number” up to the second slot.
While recording the album has been the band’s main focus over the past couple of years, Hanson says they’ll be looking ahead to more festival shows following the release, along with diving back into writing new music. For now, the band has its 11-track debut under its belt, and fewer pieces of life to pick up than before.
You can catch Them Heavy Stones playing songs from Somewhere After Yesterday at The Moxi on December 11, with support from Estin & The 86’d.
