"Tom Petty, Springsteen, Neil Young, and Pearl Jam...these are the people I look to," says Chris Carrabba, the creative force behind Dashboard Confessional. "They do what they want and follow their hearts, going wherever their music is taking them. I look to those guys, and I start to think: how does it work for them? What were they holding on to, and do I hold on to that as well?"

With the release of his fifth full-length album Alter The Ending, the Boca Raton, Florida resident is no longer simply an up-and-coming musician; he's a career artist. Alter is certainly the most defining album of what has already been a remarkable career; on one end, it's a return to the full band sound of Carrabba's earliest, pre-Dashboard work, and yet also the most forward-thinking and innovative record he's ever recorded.

"When I started Dashboard eight years ago, I was reacting to these other bands I had been in," says Carrabba, referring to his time in the bands the Vacant Andys and Further Seems Forever. "At the time, I needed something...simpler." If those bands were about being loud and filling a room, Carrabba's instinct was to strip it all down and let his voice and his guitar carry the emotions.

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