Pressure Machine

Arriving only a year after their previous arena-rock effort, the Las Vegas band produced a stunningly quiet, intensely intimate concept album centered around frontman Brandon Flowers' childhood hometown of Nephi, Utah. The project heavily interpolates documentary-style audio interviews with the town's actual residents, exploring the devastating impacts of the opioid epidemic and small-town stagnation through lush, acoustic heartland rock. It was widely lauded as their most mature and conceptually daring work.