Denver emo band A Place For Owls lean into their lofi folk and acoustic slowcore influences on All Thieves, Vol. 1, a new seven song EP featuring collaborations with phoneswithchords, Josaleigh Pollett, Ben Seretan, Flight Mode, Gol Olímpico, Adam Anglin, and Nathan K.

All Thieves, Vol. 1
A Place For Owls
Broom of Destruction (BOD006)
25 September 2026

All Thieves bio by Ben Sooy, lead singer of A Place For Owls

“Good artists borrow, great artists steal.”

Theft happens best between friends. I steal my best ideas and thoughts from my buddies all the time. And this kind of theft feels especially important because we live in a culture where we spend so much anxious time trying to define ourselves by what we own, what we can keep, and we build a whole identity around having more. We think life is a competition, but it’s actually supposed to be cooperative play.

Artists, sadly, bring this same competitive, cutthroat spirit into music making. We start to view the other creative folks around us as rivals to be destroyed, not community to be enjoyed and partnered with. (We believe in the cooperative spirit so deeply, that we started a nonprofit to support Colorado working musicians - Holy Fool.)

When we started A Place For Owls, it was all cooperative play. We used to get together at Daniel Perez’s little green house in Denver’s Barnum neighborhood. We’d smoke cigarettes and play acoustic guitar in the shed in the back yard. Most of our best songs started out as jokes, ways to make each other laugh. Or cry. The songs were reasons to get together. And getting together was the point.

Our second LP, how we dig in the earth, was mostly about me and my wife and our own pain of losing a pregnancy. I needed to talk about the heavy stuff that was going on, for sure, but after writing and recording a really personal record, I was kind of tired of talking about my own pain. I wanted to talk about us. I wanted to try to write songs with my buddies and I wanted to see if we could make a record where every track featured another artist we loved and respected. I wanted to get back to cooperative play.

Slowly, in fits and starts over the last year or so, we wrote and recorded songs remotely with some of our favorite bands and songwriters who live all over the world. The result is All Thieves, Vol. 1, a collection of seven songs we’re really proud of.

Most of the songs were written and arranged fairly quickly and collaboratively. We would schedule a studio session with Nick Webber, and start tracking whatever song we had written most recently, with almost no idea what the arrangement would be. We’d make quick decisions, first-idea-best-idea style, go almost entirely by instinct, and usually keep the first take. Then we’d send a quick mix to one of our buddies, and often a week or so later, we’d get back guitar, synth, vocals, whatever they thought the song needed.

We collaborated with phoneswithchords (from outside Nashville, TN), Josaleigh Pollett (Salt Lake City, UT), Ben Seretan (Climax, NY), Flight Mode (Oslo, Norway), Gol Olímpico (Monterrey, Mexico), Nathan K. (Nashville, TN), and Adam Anglin (Denver, CO).

Here’s the track list for All Thieves, Vol. 1:

  1. To Be Found (feat. phoneswithchords)

  2. Son Of Man (feat. Josaleigh Pollett)

  3. Too Far Gone (feat. Ben Seretan)

  4. (For Me To Reach You) (feat. Ben Seretan)

  5. It Goes Around The Sun (feat. Flight Mode and Nathan K.)

  6. The Seeds That I Planted (feat. Gol Olímpico)

  7. The Garden (feat. Adam Anglin)

A lot of these songs were unexpected, unlooked-for gifts. The lyrics are often weirder and more abstract than a lot of our songs. Son of Man is about a dream I had where Jesus Christ appeared in my kitchen and made me gluten free scones, for example. Also there’s two songs written and sung by Daniel Perez (Too Far Gone and The Garden), which is a first for our band.

Anyways, I hope you like All Thieves, Vol. 1! Every song will be released as a single. The whole thing will be collected at the end as an EP. (We’re also planning a small run of CDs that will be available only at our live shows at first, but eventually be available online.) We’re self-releasing and self-promoting this album through our own record label Broom of Destruction.

If you write for a music publication, have a podcast, or you promote cool DIY music in any form, and you’re interested in doing an interview or any follow up with the members of A Place For Owls or any of our creative partners, just reach out to hello@aplaceforowls.com.

Keep playing! Keep cooperating!

Ben Sooy from A Place For Owls

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