In a world where every creative seems to be chasing the next big trend, King’s Kaleidoscope is staying laser-focused on their unique artistry. The Seattle-based band, known for their bold experimentation and thought-provoking lyrics, has never been content to follow the crowd. Instead, they’ve carved out their own path — one typically filled with massive arrangements and creativity. That creativity has lead frontman Chad Gardner in a new direction this season, one full of stripped-down acoustics, live visuals powered by old-school overhead projectors, and the raw honesty of what they call “Modern Psalms.”
We spoke with Gardner about how the band is reimagining worship music, embracing mechanical creativity, and leaning into the tension of silence and uncertainty. In true King’s Kaleidoscope fashion, they’re proving that authenticity doesn’t need to be flashy — it just needs to be real.
You can also hear this conversation on The RELEVANT Podcast.
RELEVANT: What is the “Modern Songs” project?
Chad Gardner: Basically, King’s Kaleidoscope spent the last two years releasing two full-length albums and doing two national tours. This was our “down cycle” year, and we wanted to find something fun and creative to do. Our manager had always suggested doing an acoustic tour. He said, “Your band is so big. You do these huge, bombastic shows—why not try something acoustic?”
I’d always resisted that idea because, in my mind, acoustic tours are what you do when you’re washed up, doing songs and stories tours. I’d always said the only way I’d do it was if it was just me, an acoustic guitar, an LED wall, and some video. Then one of our team members, JJ, mentioned seeing five overhead projectors from the University of Washington’s art department for sale on Craigslist for $200. He suggested messing around with them, and that sparked my creativity.
We got the projectors and started experimenting—putting prisms in front of them, adding motors with the help of my robotics engineer cousin, and printing 20-foot-long scrolls of overhead transparencies. Suddenly, the idea of an acoustic show built around this creative outlet became a much more immersive visual experience. It started to feel like performance art.
We stripped everything down to three musicians and had my friend Zach performing all the visuals live using these old-school overhead projectors. The whole thing was a fun experiment. We said, “Let’s just play a few shows on the West Coast for fun,” and by the last show at the House of Blues in Anaheim, I thought, “This is a top three or five show of my life.”
The performances kept evolving as we tried new things with the projectors. It felt playful and full of life. We created a quiet, contemplative show with a lot of space, and it just worked. So, at the end of the year, while the experience was still fresh, we filmed a live performance and decided to stream it to share this “playground” with more people.
I have to assume you’re the only person this century who’s been inspired by an overhead projector, but I love it. What do you think makes this visual element so impactful?
I think this world has felt so refreshing to us because it’s so mechanical. We’re expressing all these visuals with no real digital element outside of printing. Zach has to take whatever’s going to go on the projectors, whether it’s plants or colorful transparencies, and put them on with his own hands. The audience is watching him build the visual in real time and then take it apart in real time for every song.
The mechanicalness of it feels refreshing because we’re not staring at laptops or looking at a lighting engineer with a big computer screen. It’s all very hands-on and mechanical.
That’s also what the music side feels like. I don’t have an eight-piece band behind me. I’m having to relearn how to play all the songs on guitar, rearrange them, and distill a lot of our catalog—songs from across our six albums—down to minimal elements. We’re using as few sounds as possible: piano, violin, guitar, a few bass synths, and a few samples. No click tracks, just playing with two other guys and using wedge monitors.
Everything about it felt very hands-on and tactile, like being in the real world creatively rather than relying on technology as much.
Especially in a world where there’s a new technology every 15 minutes, I like that you’re returning to basics. As you selected songs and art for this project, was there a story or message you were trying to convey?
As we were coming off back-to-back years of big tours and full-length album releases, what naturally happens after that is a lot of self-reflection and thought about what we’re actually doing. We’re not in the busyness or the tornado of releasing music and touring.
We had a lot of conversations this year about what King’s Kaleidoscope is for people and our little niche band. What are we bringing to the world, and what is it that we do naturally? That’s where the “Modern Psalms” language came from—we started using it internally.
I was a worship director arranging hymns for church, and a lot of people found out about us because of that. But as soon as we started writing our own songs, I began writing prayers—sometimes frustrated, sometimes more praise-oriented. As worshipful as King’s Kaleidoscope is, we’ve never really written songs that churches can sing, outside of a few hymn arrangements before we started writing original music.
So what is that? It’s a very worshipful focus, but it’s very personal. I think that’s what reading Psalms feels like. We started using this phrase, “Modern Psalms,” this year. When we were curating the catalog for acoustic songs, it felt like we were presenting lyrics more than wild musicality. Each song was presenting its own perspective and a place where I was at with faith or prayer, just on its own without a lot of bells and whistles.
That “Modern Psalms” language comes from us trying to understand what we’ve been doing the last 10 years. Our band turned 10 this year—we celebrated our 10-year anniversary of releasing albums—and that milestone caused us a lot of reflection time.
Let me know if further adjustments are needed!
Do you think the next 10 years will look different for King’s Kaleidoscope?
That’s something we’re still figuring out.
This is kind of funny. Our team went and watched an Elevation Worship show, and I was pleasantly surprised. I thought, “Wow, okay, this feels pretty dialed in,” in ways I personally didn’t expect to enjoy.
On the way home, we were thinking about how a King’s Kaleidoscope show feels very worshipful in a lot of ways, but it’s different. The difference between an Elevation Worship church or stadium show and a King’s Kaleidoscope club show is that I think everyone in the Elevation audience loves church. At a King’s show, maybe half the audience loves church.
As for the next 10 years, I’m not sure how to answer that, but I know we’ve realized that our audience resonates deeply with these Psalm-like songs we naturally create—songs about faith, to God, or conversations with God. But a large part of this audience wants nothing to do with church. They feel out of place and have a hard time with it, which is fine. Church is a complicated topic.
The burden I keep coming back to is: What can King’s Kaleidoscope do in the next season to serve these people in a way a church would, without being a church? Can they come to a King’s Kaleidoscope show in 2025 and find something beneficial? Can we be used in the way these people really need us to be used?
King’s Kaleidoscope has an audience of people who want to worship but can’t find a church where they can do that. I want to design a tour in this next season that facilitates that in some way.
That makes sense and ties back to the idea of “Modern Psalms.” It’s about creating space for both questioning and praise. Do you feel like your audience’s connection to this tension has been intentional on your part?
Well, back to that difference of what it feels like to be at a major worship event. There’s such a clear purpose at those events. Everybody comes in knowing the songs—they sing them every Sunday at their churches—and they’re there to worship in a very specific way. I think that’s actually beautiful. But the King’s Kaleidoscope audience doesn’t always know what it thinks about church or God.
It’s more about coming to a show to witness me wrestle with faith through the lyrics and the songs I’m singing. They may resonate with that, and there are worshipful points in it. The door is cracked open for them to watch me wrestle through faith, which is different from saying, “We’re going to sing this right now to God.”
Somebody might not be ready for that—they might not know what they think. But if they can witness me pour out my heart to God in a lot of different ways, I think that creates space for an audience that’s at a different point on the discipleship path.
I still see everybody as on the same path. If you desire to know God, or even if you’re curious, that curiosity puts you on the path. It might not mean you’re walking into a church service, but you might go to a King’s show or put on a King’s album because it feels a little further ahead from where that more congregational element is.
Do you see yourself doing more projects like this?
I want to integrate the mechanicalness of the visuals into our main tours, and I think some of these totally reconstructed, minimal arrangements will remain in our shows.
The world is really noisy, and part of what this felt like was creating a space where we could tell the audience to put their phones away. We’d embrace the silence, and every night, I’d tell the audience we’re leaning into it. There’s this tension of silence, maybe some discomfort or unpredictability, and we’re going to hold it and lean into it together.
