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Smokey Brights

Smokey Brights make music that taps into history and stretches out a kind of visionary rock that rolls relentlessly forward while recombining iconic sounds - from funk to Fleetwood Mac, Bowie to Blur, disco to Dire Straits, and splashes of Floyd psychedelia - crafting something urgent, fun, and utterly surprising. The band’s driving rhythms, lusciously tight harmonies, and swirling guitar lines lay down a sumptuous, expansive 70s landscape that invites the listener to lay back, turn up, and dive deep into the depths of inner space. 

Smokey Brights are fronted by husband and wife songwriting duo Ryan Devlin (guitar, vocals) and Kim West (keys, vocals). Their North Seattle home, crammed full of thrift shop treasures and instruments, is a constant bustle of songwriting, demos, BBQs, and band practice. Song ideas are shared over coffee, sketched into notebooks strewn throughout their home, and flushed out on guitar, piano, and voice before making their way downstairs to the band’s wood-paneled practice room.

Smokey Brights’ rhythmic bedrock is laid down by the mind-melding duo of Jim Vermillion (bass) and Nick Krivchenia (drums). Best friends and brothers in rhythm for over ten years, their sonic connection is the palpable pulse that runs through the signature, Smokeys sound.

Floating deftly above this rock foundation are the unpredictable and experimental lines of guitar hero Mike Kalnoky (guitar). Pulling from a seemingly endless bag of six-string tricks, Kalnoky brings a level of experimentation to the world of Smokey Brights that makes the music both deeper and stranger, but never at the expense of song integrity.

In the six years Smokey Brights have played together, they've come to focus on the familiar and the bizarre - the spaces where the light just starts to shine through the darkness. Their music evokes that feeling of discovering a dusty record in your parents’ attic that somehow sounds new, made just for the moment you are in. Delighting in the experimentation of groove and sound, but always building upon a sturdy framework of song, Smokey Brights creates what, at times, seems lost in modern music: real songs with real meanings that elicit real feelings.

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