The Devil Wears Prada Dive Into the Making of 'Flowers'

With the recent release of their ninth album Flowers, The Devil Wears Prada are stepping into one of the strongest eras of their career – but getting there was anything but smooth. From battling desert winds that destroyed their set pieces, to filming a music video on the one fog-drenched day in L.A., to literal floods in their rental house, the band’s creative process was equal parts inspiration and absolute chaos.

Still, the result is a record that feels like a milestone. Flowers captures 20 years of growth, honesty and evolution, landing as one of TDWP’s most introspective and fully realised works to date. Fresh off a massive touring cycle and their first-ever Active Rock charting single, Jeremy DePoyster and Mike Hranica sat down with Music Feeds to share the stories behind the music – the accidents that turned into breakthroughs, the collaborators who shaped the songs, and the hilariously unfortunate moments that no one will forget anytime soon.

The Devil Wears Prada – ‘That Same Place Where The Flowers Never Grow’

**1. “The Maypole Massacre”: When Their Flowers Video Shoot Fell Apart in the Desert**

Mike Hranica: Wyatt Clough, who directed all of the music videos for the album, shot the cover as well as the music video around Flowers and Wave. And the stuff we did with the maypole, and the flowers and the triangle, we did that in the desert. Wyatt’s wife built that, she does set design and whatnot. And the day was very windy, so it broke. So for the whole day, the staff, these amazing people that break their backs doing music videos and production, were just toiling to make that thing stand up for the whole day for the shoot.
Jeremy DePoyster: They got it back up for like 15 minutes, they got a bunch of shots and then it broke again, it was really dramatic. We weren’t in that shot, we were just sitting in this tent in 100 degree weather going: “uh oh.”
Mike: Luckily we got the cover shot before that.

2. “Welcome to Chernobyl”: How L.A. Accidentally Gave Them a Post-Apocalyptic Music Video

Mike: For the Everybody Knows video, we just filmed that a few weeks ago, and it’s this grey hellscape. It’s super moody and it’s just Jeremy and I performing in fog the whole time. But the location in Calabasas outside L.A. was actually supposed to be extremely clear and looking out over the ocean. We got the one foggy day ever in Los Angeles, and we’re just like: there’s nothing else we can do. You can’t come do it tomorrow, we have the location for one day. So we shot in this post-apocalyptic-looking grey. But it was actually not supposed to look like that!
Jeremy: It was supposed to be bright, fine, and vibrant — a coastal feel.
Mike: Yeah, the same as Flowers. But now that it’s done, literally earlier today someone was like: “oh, it turned out so much better.” So it was meant to be. But what was supposed to look like L.A. looks like Chernobyl.
Jeremy: Yeah, it was nuts.
Mike: Our manager actually said people are going to be like: “oh, what’s the effect they used to make it look like that?” But it wasn’t an effect, we just coincidentally got a grey, foggy day in Los Angeles.
Jeremy: And we had to climb six stories on a single ladder thing all the way up. And we don’t do well with heights.
Mike: We did learn that Jon [Gering] doesn’t mind heights. He was just up there hanging out. But Jeremy and I don’t love heights. And because we were in fog all day, the metal railing, the rungs you’re using are slippery because it’s in the fog.
Jeremy: We weren’t clipped in and we had signed a waiver so…

3. Accidental Genius: The Hit Song That Happened Because Their Writer Forgot the Date

Jeremy: We did a lot of songwriting sessions with other people on this record because we had done that a couple of times on the last record, and we got some really cool unique stuff. It’s not like buying a song off of somebody, it’s collaborating with someone new, and it kind of opens up new pathways you might not have considered before. We’d gone out to L.A. to write with somebody, and the guy who was going to just be working the computer during the session was there and the writer had mixed up the days. So we were just there and he was like: “well, do you want to just start a song together anyway without him?” We did, and Everybody Knows is what came out of that. And that is one of my favourite songs on the record. It was basically just about making the best of a moment and saying: “well, we’re here anyway, let’s just do something!”
Mike: I actually didn’t know that, I wasn’t around on that day!

4. From Dayton to Chart Toppers: Reuniting With an Old Friend After 20 Years

Mike: On the writer note, one of the guys we worked with for Ritual and Cure Me is a fellow named Tyler [Smyth]. Tyler’s got GRAMMY nods, and he’s written a bunch for I Prevail and huge bands. For those who don’t know, Tyler actually grew up in Dayton, same as us, and he actually used to live with Chris [Rubey] and Daniel [Williams] from The Devil Wears Prada. Daniel and Tyler were very, very close, and Tyler ultimately ended up in L.A. and was writing for huge artists. But we knew Tyler from when we were 16 and basically living in a frat house on the campus of Dayton University. He just lived in this one little bedroom.
Jeremy: It was like a pantry that he made into a bedroom.
Mike: Yeah, he and his now-wife lived in there playing video games and just making music. And that was his start.
Jeremy: We had never worked together musically for 19 years (laughs).
Mike: Yeah, we never actually creatively did anything. It was awesome getting to work with Tyler after knowing him for 20 years.

5. Floods, Fog & Harley-Davidsons: The Total Chaos of Making Flowers

Jeremy: This has nothing to do with the record, but one day while we were working on the record, Mike and Jon had left for the weekend.
Mike: Jon had a wedding and we weren’t going to be working so I just went home.
Jeremy: Mike went home and I was there with our photographer who was basically shooting the whole experience of making this record. We were like: “oh my god, we both have a bathtub in our bathrooms, we should take a bath!” She was downstairs, so she draws a bath and is in there, and I draw one upstairs. I’m in the bathtub watching Netflix, just relaxing. Then she calls me: “oh my god, it’s flooding!!”
Basically, the house had never been lived in and the tub upstairs dumped water straight into her bathroom. Inches of it. We’re both down there trying to shut it off and clean everything before anyone came back.
I ended up taking a bucket and dumping it into the sink little by little for days. It was ridiculous.
Mike: While we were there I was also working on my motorcycle, and it tipped and punched a hole in the wall.
Jeremy: Oh it did too!
Mike: I was like: “should I paint it?” They said: “no, leave it alone.” I did patch the hole though.
Jeremy: We had a lot of fun, though — we took our motorcycles out there and were just ripping around. Four of the five people in Prada ride. When we were in Hawaii, we actually rented Harleys and rode around the island. Four of us have Harleys, not just motorcycles. So we are basically a Harley band.