In an era where playlists often favor singles over stories, Welcome to the 21st! is charting a different course—one rooted in narrative, history, and imagination. The Dallas/UK–based songwriting collective, anchored by guitarist and songwriter Bob Blumenfeld and vocalist Touanda, with producer and drummer John Dufilho, has steadily built a catalog of concept-driven releases that blur the line between indie pop, historical fiction, and cinematic world-building.
Their most recent release Neon Apologies, re-released in 2025, is perhaps their most ambitious project yet: a retro-futuristic synthwave exploration of World War II-era mystery, refracted through 1980s nostalgia and a UFO mythology that feels surprisingly contemporary. We spoke with guitarist Bob Blumenfeld about the album’s origins, its genre-shifting sound, and why Welcome to the 21st! keeps returning to big ideas and immersive worlds.
Neon Apologies takes listeners into a retro-futuristic synthwave world rooted in a little-known chapter of World War II with a UFO twist. What first drew you to that era and storyline, and how did combining historical narrative with 1980s nostalgia shape the album’s sound?
Today, popular culture accepts the concept of unexplained orbs and lights in the sky—there is a collective effort to remove the stigma around such sightings at the same time as there is a greater effort to understand what the phenomenon actually is. I am fascinated by the UFO/UAP storyline, and that storyline really kicks off in World War II, when there was a lot of unusual activity being put into the sky by all sides of the conflict.
The first truly new flying objects were German rockets raining down on England. Another was the Japanese balloon bombs that Japan floated across the Pacific, hoping to send devastation from above back to the U.S. They were attempting firebomb attacks on the mainland in the hope that it would erode popular support for the war effort closing in on Japan itself.
Those balloon bombs failed miserably, but they were misunderstood by U.S. pilots as “unknown flying objects,” which led to early UFO—or “Foo”—sightings by both pilots and civilians. So as rockets and balloon bombs went up, pilots started reporting weird things—some real, some imagined, and some alien, at least in my mind. That’s the thematic backdrop.
Flash forward to 1982, the year Neon Apologies is set. A group of elderly Japanese women who had made those balloon bombs in the 1940s began a process of apologizing to the families of the few people killed in Oregon when one of the bombs exploded. They sent origami paper swans and eventually met with the families who had lost loved ones. That moment of humanity, regret, and reconciliation really stuck with me—and it became the emotional heart of the album.
This project marks a stylistic shift from your more guitar-driven indie and folk influences heard on Coffee and Dyatlov Pass. What made now the right time to explore synthwave, and did the genre expansion change the way you write or collaborate as a collective?
Personally, I listen to a wide variety of music—past and present. From the outset of Welcome to the 21st!, our artistic goal was to let the songs take us where they need to go. Songs have an intrinsic inner spirit waiting to be discovered and released. As musicians, we let the songs dictate the genre, and it’s our job to orchestrate and produce them in the way they are meant to be heard.
I had been working on the songs that became Neon Apologies for years, and I always felt they belonged together in a cyberpunk, synthwave, vaporwave, indie pop universe. After finishing the record, I realized something else: Neon Apologies is set in 1982, when I was 15 years old, absorbing new music and living a pretty great life.
Musically, that era left a mark. Songs like Peter Gabriel’s Shock the Monkey, A Flock of Seagulls’ I Ran (So Far Away), and bands like The Cure, The Police, Men Without Hats, and Berlin were all charting hits. That DNA found its way into the album naturally.
The band spans continents—from Dallas to the UK—with Bob, Touanda, and John each bringing distinct musical identities. How does that geographic and stylistic diversity impact your creative process, particularly when developing a cohesive concept album?
The creative process was really born out of emerging technology and the Covid pandemic. During 2020–21, we were all stuck at home but still wanting to create and stay active musically. Welcome to the 21st! began in 2020 when I discovered Touanda online and asked her to sing on one song.
The first song we co-wrote was Lost But Found from Dyatlov Pass. When I heard her demo vocal, I was blown away—it was exactly what I wanted and then some. Everything grew from there.
I was already working with John on another project, The Disappearing Act, and since we live about 30 miles apart, we sometimes still work the old-fashioned way, together in the studio. But Welcome to the 21st! is really a recording project born in cyberspace.
On Neon Apologies, Touanda sings only a few songs because she understandably took time away for the birth of her daughter, so we brought in some guest vocalists. The process itself works well for us: I start the song and sketch the demo, usually come up with the title and concept, then Touanda writes lyrics and sings the melody, and John adds instrumentation and handles mixing, with my input along the way.
Welcome to the 21st! often creates concept-driven projects rather than standalone singles. What inspires that approach, and how do those narratives evolve from idea to final track?
For me, it’s pretty simple. I love history, I love the idea of non-human intelligence—whatever that may be—and I love making indie music albums. Blending history, like we did on Dyatlov Pass, with plausible-reality thematic worlds, like on Neon Apologies, lets me combine those passions.
Concept albums also give me structure: a beginning, a middle, and an end. A storyline that allows the songs to gravitate toward something bigger. And, just in case any of these ideas ever turn into a musical theater show, they’re already halfway there.
Your albums feel like immersive cinematic universes. If Neon Apologies were adapted into a visual project—film, animated series, or even a video game—what would it look like?
That one’s easy. We’d go straight back to 1982. I’d want to cross-pollinate the cyberpunk noir of Blade Runner with the suburban alien warmth of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. If those two worlds had a creative child together, Neon Apologies would be it.
Looking Ahead
With Neon Apologies, Welcome to the 21st! continues to prove that indie music can still be expansive, thoughtful, and deeply narrative-driven. Whether you’re drawn in by its synthwave textures, its historical intrigue, or its quietly emotional core, the EP invites listeners to slow down, tune in, and step fully into its world.
You can stream Neon Apologies and the band’s full catalog on Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/album/1Gxapt36PzudqV4uXI81Aj, and follow Welcome to the 21st! on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/wt21st for updates on new releases, visuals, and the next chapter in their ever-expanding universe including Wave from the Gate which will be released, April 13, 2026.