Photo by Mayank Mishra

On the edge of their new album, How the Light Felt, is the grief and heavy processing carried throughout the latest effort by Smut, yet the album’s closing track, “Unbroken Thought”, is a hopeful glow in its final breaths that is there as a placeholder for healing wounded hearts. The Chicago dream-pop rockers comprised of vocalist Tay Roebuck, guitarist Andrew Min, bassist and synthesizer Bell Cenower, guitarist and synthesizer Sam Ruschman and drummer Aidan O’Connor hit a certain soft spot spectrum with their lush, ‘90s-indebted daydream fantasies with a modern gaze of occasional heavy crush guitars and slanted bedroom production, and it’s here where those chambers echo profound in this moment. “Stay awhile, I’ve been so lonely,” Roebucks voice carries on through the distance, as if it’s seeing you, reaching out to you, and holding you.

Directed by: Aidan O’Connor

Smut’s How the Light Felt will be released November 11th on Bayonet Records.