Yeah with these frameworks, you usually need to pair it with a backend that talks to your database. Most of the code you write in these frameworks run on the client (but they employ some server rendering techniques for performance reasons, but generally you treat it like client code)

Astro is another one that is server-first, similar to PHP, so maybe you'll like that. It also has integrations with the popular frontend frameworks.

And if you don't like any of that, htmx is great!

>how do I make this talk to a database?

With an API, depending on the db too some have ready connectors.