The Lumineers

The Lumineers joined KROQ hosts Klein and Ally, along with a room full of lucky listeners, at Audacy’s Helpful Honda Sound Space in Los Angeles to celebrate the release of the group’s 2025 album, Automatic, and give us a taste of what’s ahead on their upcoming world tour. The Lumineers recently revealed details surrounding the highly-anticipated North American leg of their Automatic 2025 World Tour -- with dates beginning July 3. As the band gets set to drop by stadiums, arenas, and amphitheaters across the US and Canada through mid-October in celebration of their 2025 album Automatic, Jeremiah Fraites and Wesley Schultz gave fans a taste of what's to come with a special set recorded live in Los Angeles. Sitting down to chat with one half of the duo, Wesley Schultz, during the event, Klein began by questioning him about a crime that is mentioned in their track “Same Old Song,” which he believes took place when the band last visited KROQ. “Wesley, are we responsible for you losing your mom's guitar forever?” Klein wondered. “It was 2011 actually, so you guys wouldn't have played us back then, sadly,” Wes explains. “We were filming a takeaway show, where you would show up and it was one take, so you couldn't edit, and you couldn't fix anything. We went into La Brea Park by the tar pits and we -- I think the only instrument we have is a mandolin -- so we're playing that song ‘Classy Girls,’ and our friend was filming us. We came back to the minivan and it was like 3:30 in the afternoon, and the trunk had been just popped open… Anyway, we were just confused. Like, we opened up the trunk and we're like, ‘Oh, where are they?’ That’s funny, where are the instruments?’ Because it's just daytime you don't think, and it's a really busy street. Yeah, they took everything, but they left the keys behind, meaning they left the keyboard because that was too heavy for them, or too big. Too worthless. I don't know.” “I wrote a lot of those songs on my mom's guitar that they took, so it was kind of sad,” he adds. “We filled out a police report and on the top right, it has your number of the day of crime and we were like 1,472 of that, and the cop was like, ‘You're not gonna see that.’” “The other cool thing,” Wes continues, “We had three more weeks to tour and everyone along that tour lent us instruments. I remember one of the cities, the guy from the 4 Non Blondes who played acoustic guitar gave us a guitar for that gig. Everywhere we went with a cello, with guitars, with bass guitars… You know, a side of people that were so kind for the rest, and we were again nobodies. They [KROQ] weren't playing us,” he jokes. “I don't know if I said that before.” Touching on the new record, Automatic, which arrived Valentine's Day 2025, Wes tells us the band didn’t initially intend on releasing the album on the lover’s holiday, “But in our first music video for this album, on ‘Same Old Song,” Jerry [Fraites] was drumming with roses that were attached to his sticks.” Followers quickly surmised that the band was alluding to a release date. “They were actually correct,” he says, “because it was coming out on Valentine's Day, but no we're not that well planned out.” But don’t be fooled, Wesley definitely has a romantic side, explaining how his wife, Brandy, technically co-wrote the album track “Dead Sea.” “She said, ‘You're like my dead sea,’” he says. “We were just dating at the time and I was like, ‘Did you come up with that?’ Then on Valentine's Day, I actually gave her a demo of that and I snuck it into a box of chocolates. I cut out a CD shape, put the CD and hid it in the box. I did it to kind of roast her, because she said she hates people that give boxes of chocolates as a gift. We were apart, I was recording, and I sent it to her, and she didn't even open it. She's so mad, like ‘He doesn't listen to me,’ and I was like, ‘Well did you open it?’ She turned around, opened it up, and ...