Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith crafts luminous, flowing sonic environments across an array of synthesizers, with the Buchla Music Easel figuring most prominently. Her work overflows with striking, emotive melodies paired with her distorted, otherworldly singing, reflecting an enthusiasm for the limitless options offered by electronic instruments. Beyond her own widely praised releases—The Kid (2017) and The Mosaic of Transformation (2020)—she joined electronic music trailblazer Suzanne Ciani for the 2016 album Sunergy and teamed with composer Emile Mosseri for 2022’s I Could Be Your Dog/I Could Be Your Moon. The intricate, vibrant Let’s Turn It Into Sound appeared in 2022, while 2024’s Neptunes EP marked a shift toward dancefloor energy through her partnership with Joe Goddard of Hot Chip.

Raised amid the tranquil setting of Orcas Island in northwest Washington, Smith pursued studies in composition and sound engineering at the Berklee College of Music. She began as a singer, later adding classical guitar and piano, and launched the indie folk outfit Ever Isles. Upon returning to Orcas Island, a neighbor’s loan of a Buchla 100 synthesizer sparked an intense focus on electronic music, prompting her to capture serene ambient textures drawn from the natural surroundings. After posting several such pieces online, she joined the Austin imprint Western Vinyl and delivered the digital-only Tides in early 2014. Euclid followed in early 2015 as her first physical release—an exploratory, buoyant full-length that leaned more toward pop than earlier efforts. That same year she contributed to the music video for Panda Bear’s “Boys Latin” and scored Reggie Watts’ short film Brasilia: City of the Future.

April 2016 brought the next album, Ears, which introduced a somewhat darker tone than Euclid along with greater vocal emphasis and woodwind writing. In the wake of its release, Smith supported Animal Collective on their spring North American tour. She next partnered with new age innovator Suzanne Ciani on Sunergy, the thirteenth installment in Rvng Intl.’s Frkwys series. Early 2017 saw a cover of Sade’s “By Your Side,” followed by The Kid, her most approachable record to date, featuring acoustic contributions from the Berlin ensemble Stargaze. The 22-minute “Abstractions,” drawn from Harry Everett Smith’s Early Abstractions films, surfaced in 2018. Tides: Music for Meditation and Yoga, captured in 2013 for her mother’s yoga sessions, reached listeners in 2019. Ghostly International issued The Mosaic of Transformation in 2020, an album shaped by unbound wave phenomena and electricity’s physical force.

Smith discovered a fitting collaborator in composer Emile Mosseri (Minari), resulting first in the brief 2021 work I Could Be Your Dog—an experimental collection fusing their heavily processed voices and electronic pieces—then in 2022’s companion EP I Could Be Your Moon, which together formed a complete album. Also arriving in 2022 was Let’s Turn It Into Sound, a dense, forward-leaning full-length Smith characterized as “a puzzle.” Her ethereal interpretation of Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” received an official release in 2023. Neptunes, the 2024 EP issued via Domino’s Smugglers Way imprint and shared with Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard, contained one joint track, one solo piece from each artist, and mutual remixes. ~ Paul Simpson