Local band, DONEFOR, to release song with Sleeping With Sirens lead singer Kellin Quinn

Local band DONEFOR’s new song “Paradigm” will feature Sleeping With Sirens lead singer Kellin Quinn.

The Fort Myers-based pop-punk metalcore band is looking to reach a wider audience by opening for bigger acts, touring across the state and collaborating with hit artists.

Parker Shogren, lead singer and founder of DONEFOR, took it upon himself to contact Quinn.

DONEFOR had already finished “Paradigm.” However, Shogren felt something was still missing.

A fan of Sleeping with Sirens, Shogren felt that Quinn was the right person for the job.

Sirens is a 2010s pop punk, /post-hardcore band, whose music is similar in style to DONEFOR’s sound.

Shogren stayed up late one night trying to find a way to contact Quinn.

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“I went through everything and a ton of websites and a ton of emails, and then I got his email somehow from this one website that I’m not going to share because I don’t want people finding out my strategies. I emailed him [and] talked to him for a bit,” Shogren said.

And within 12 hours, Quinn sent in a verse he had recorded from his home studio. Once it was in, the band’s engineer mixed and mastered it.

Shogren gave Quinn the freedom to do what he wanted with it.

“I said, ‘Hey, you’re the platinum-selling artist, man. Do whatever you want.’ Then he did that. And then [he did] the screaming verse and then some harmonies,” Shogren said. “He just kind of did his own thing on the verse and the bridge and all that.”

The band gave Quinn the lyrics, and he tweaked them to fit what he wanted his style to sound like.

Shogren said the band’s idea was to see how close they could get to a radio-style song while keeping to their roots.

Riley Stewart, the band’s guitarist who sang on “Paradigm,” honed in on the song’s subject.

“The song is about anxiety and being in your head,” explained Stewart, “and I think whenever you listen to it, it sounds like a breakup song or a love song, but it’s really like an internal conversation with yourself. I had this idea of like the higher self and your lower self. The higher self is you as a person, your normal personality, and then your lower self is buried inside you, but it’s like telling you. It’s what induces your panic attacks, and it’s your intrusive thoughts and everything.”

DONEFOR feels that the collaboration will make for a potent single.

“I feel like we have to go big with something, and we decided to make this song a banger, a really good single, and just invest a lot into it,” Stewart said. “It’s something that we want to create a backbone of our band from and just really push us to another level.”

• RELATED: Southwest Florida band DONEFOR celebrates over 100,000 streams on Spotify

Shogren said the band will always keep to their local roots.

“When we started, we were a ‘do it yourself’ band, and we still have that at our roots, no matter what, that we’re gonna be ground to the pavement, that we do things our own way. Figuring it out as we go.”

Earlier this month, Quinn invited the band to a sold-out show in Orlando. There, they shot videos with him, hung out and talked. Shogren said that meeting with Quinn reminded him why he does music in the first place.

“It’s showing that even though we’re a small band from a small place, he doesn’t probably even know that. He gives us the same time of day. It shows that any artist can do that to the point where you can. It’s music at the end of the day. It’s not just, ‘Oh, you’re a local band.’ You’re a local band that not only has played on stages with these big bands but now collaborates and works with these big bands.’”

“That is what is very nice with a scene like this though, is there’s a very supportive feel that once artists are doing very well, they’re celebrated,” Shogren said.

“Paradigm” is set to be released on Nov. 15, with the music video coming two weeks after.

Click here for the band’s YouTube page, where they post vlogs, and click here for their website.