Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith shares new song & video “Stare Into Me” + new LP ‘GUSH’ out August 22!

Tomorrow, influential electronic artist, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith will release “Stare Into Me” from her forthcoming album GUSH. Watch & share the music video on YouTube now. After a string of new releases, “Urges, “Drip,” “Gush,” “What’s Between Us,” and Into Your Eyes” – Kaitlyn continues to show her dynamic musical and vocal range with this relaxed, pop-laden shuffle. She explores the fragility and vulnerability of intimacy through some of her finest songwriting to date.

Kaitlyn explains:

“This song is about the fragile tension between emotional intimacy and distance. 

It speaks to the ache of wanting to be fully seen and understood by someone who remains just out of reach. Each attempt at closeness seems to magnify the space between… 

Intimacy can be both beautiful and wounding. 

Illuminating points of communication breakdown. 

Closeness can sometimes amplify distance, and how even in misunderstanding, there’s a kind of beauty and understanding…”

In a recent interview with FLAUNT, Kaitlyn elaborated on the sensory experiences that helped inspire her new album: “It started with the song ‘Urges’ and the impulse to ‘support’ objects. I kept feeling impulses to either ‘support an object, reveal an object, or destroy an object.’ I started making lots of videos of my hands hiding an object and then revealing it… or squishing something… or putting my hand underneath it to support it… It activated so many feelings for me musically… playing with this type of personification.”

A recurring motif is her fascination with physical objects—not merely as tools, but as emotionally resonant beings. This manifests lyrically and sonically, where objects become muses for her and metaphors for deeper emotional states. In turn, the songs are deep, textured, and nuanced but held together with a pop and dance ethos that makes them feel present, immediate, and physical. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s new album, GUSH, is due August 22nd via Nettwerk.

WATCH & SHARE “STARE INTO ME” HERE:
https://youtu.be/03DuLAicuD4

Kaitlyn is excited to bring her new music to the stage at multiple summer festival appearances, including the Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland and the We Out Here Festival in Wimborne, UK. Later this year, she’ll appear at the Pitchfork Music Festival London alongside Marie Davidson and RIP MAGIC, the digital arts and music festival, MIRA 2025, in Spain alongside Floating Points, Erika de Cesar, Oneohtrix Point Never, and LINECHECK in Milan, Italy.  

Find the dates below, and for more information, visit: https://kaitlynaureliasmith.com/

ABOUT KAITLYN AURELIA SMITH:

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith is a classically trained American composer, performer, and producer from the Pacific Northwest. Her music is a form of auditory interpretation powered by curiosity and her toolkit of modular, analog, and rare synthesizers (including her signature Buchla), orchestral textures, and voice. Since her first self-release in 2012 (Tides), she has explored the endless possibilities of electronic instruments and the relationship between sound, shape, color, body movement, and expression. On her forthcoming full-length, GUSH, Kaitlyn sets her sights on aesthetics, focusing on the heightened awareness of and presence in the world, where every interaction, whether with people, objects, or nature—has the potential to become a moment of connection and personification. 

In her own words:

Gush – is about those “Look at this” moments…

shared between people…

It is about flirtation with objects and the environment…

It is about sensuality and personification…

It is about synesthesia and surrendering to those moments when the senses melt together…

It is about “ the third thing” that is created when 2 things come together…

It is about the way the human form is in service of…

It is about experiencing the genius of everything…                  –KAS

Kaitlyn finds wild, rippling inspiration in tactile moments, partly due to her abiding appreciation of aesthetics (a philosophical approach to the principles of beauty) and, in part, to her synesthesia. “Where some people mix things like color and taste, I get physical urges in correlation to sound,” she says. On GUSH, Smith conveys that experience in a newly direct density and intensity, finding flirtatious meaning in dimensions and structures, emotional resonance in the personification of well-loved objects. By focusing on the metaphysical aura that surrounds that attraction rather than the thing itself, GUSH finds a hypnagogic caress in the profundity of any given second.

Throughout her career, Kaitlyn has been celebrated for embracing her urges, whether towards experimental production, Buchla synth mastery, or exploring the intersection of sound, voice, body, and form. She’s performed alongside artists like Hot Chip, Glass Beams, RY X, Caribou, and Four Tet, and composed original works for Apple, BBC Orchestra, Adult Swim, MoMA, Red Bull, and others. Kaitlyn’s song “Stratus” was also synced in the 2023 film Priscilla Motion Picture Soundtrack.