Abner Ramirez and Amanda Sudano Ramirez have spent years weaving their lives into music. As JOHNNYSWIM, the husband-and-wife duo has built a career on honesty—crafting songs that feel less like polished statements and more like confessional letters. But with their latest album, When the War Is Over, the duo has stepped into new territory, channeling raw emotion into an unfiltered exploration of grief, depression and resilience. If their past albums have been open-hearted, this one is wide open.
Sitting down with them, it’s immediately clear that the past few years have reshaped their lives—and their music.
“This album started in a season where Abner was dealing with depression for the first time,” Amanda shares. “And then as he was kind of healing from that, I started diving into a health journey where my health was deteriorating. There was a lot of fear and sadness and isolation.”
The album, she says, reflects that reality. “It’s probably the most diary-entry album we’ve done.”
For a band that has always worn their hearts on their sleeves, When the War Is Over finds JOHNNYSWIM at their most unguarded. Gone are the carefully structured choruses and crisp radio-friendly arrangements. In their place: stripped-down instrumentation, unfiltered lyrics and a sense of urgency that makes every song feel immediate. This wasn’t an album that could be fine-tuned to perfection—it had to be felt.
Songwriting as Survival
If there’s a guiding philosophy behind When the War Is Over, it’s that songwriting is as much a way to process life as it is to create art. JOHNNYSWIM has always believed in the power of music to uncover truth but this time, the writing process became an act of survival.
“One of the things we’ve learned, sometimes uncomfortably, is that we discover how we really feel about things when we write about them,” Abner says. “We don’t always have the words to process tragedy, triumph, trauma—the big T’s—until we write a song.”
That realization became especially clear when Amanda released “She Checks the Weather,” a track about her experience with chronic illness. The song, with its cascading verses and unrelenting vulnerability, felt less like a structured composition and more like a stream of consciousness. There was no polished chorus, no tidy resolution—just the raw experience of living with uncertainty.
“When we put it out, I thought, ‘I’ve done this before. I’ve released personal songs. This won’t be any different,’” Amanda recalls. “And then I found myself crying in a bathroom stall for 20 minutes.”
The response was overwhelming. Listeners flooded the comments, sharing their own stories of chronic illness, mental health struggles and loss. And for Amanda, the weight of that collective pain became almost too much to carry.
“I had to tell her to stop reading the comments,” Abner says. “People were sharing these deep traumas and Amanda—being the beautiful, compassionate person she is—was absorbing it all. But we had to remind ourselves: we can’t carry everyone’s pain. We can only share our own.”
The War and What Comes After
The album’s title carries a weight of its own. When the War Is Over—a phrase Amanda first wrote in her journal—became the question that hung over the entire record. What happens when the storm passes? How do you find yourself again after a season of survival?
“I had been feeling unwell for so long that I didn’t even remember what ‘normal’ felt like,” Amanda explains. “Even if I woke up tomorrow completely healed, I wouldn’t know how to be normal again.”
The idea of war isn’t just metaphorical—it’s visceral. It’s the daily battle with intrusive thoughts. The exhaustion of waking up and counting the hours until you can go back to sleep. The fear that even if things get better, you’ll never be the same.
“There’s no answer in the song,” Amanda says. “It’s just the process of processing.”
The Sound of Truth
Sonically, When the War Is Over strips JOHNNYSWIM’s sound down to its core. Every instrument on the album was played live—no synths, no programmed beats, no loops. It was a deliberate choice, one that forced them to be present in every note.
“We wanted every sound to have a face,” Abner explains. “It’s so easy now to make a song in an app, to pull from a library of perfectly polished sounds. But we needed to be in the room with people. I needed to look them in the eye and say, ‘That. More of that.’”
The decision wasn’t just about aesthetics—it was about honesty. “If we were going to be this vulnerable in the lyrics, the music had to match that. It had to feel human.”
Holding Space for Pain
For all the weight this album carries, JOHNNYSWIM isn’t wallowing in despair. They’re inviting listeners into a space where pain and hope can coexist. If there’s one message they want people to take away, it’s that no darkness is too deep to be understood, too heavy to be carried together.
“There’s nothing in you that’s unlovable,” Abner says. “The darkest corner of your brain—the thought you think is too terrible to share—it is still lovable.”
Amanda nods. “And sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do for someone isn’t fixing their pain. It’s just sitting with them in it.”
The war may not be over yet. But if this album is any indication, JOHNNYSWIM has learned how to hold onto each other in the trenches—and how to make art that helps the rest of us do the same.
