How can a band stay together when its members no longer live on the same continent? That question faced the Ashtray Hearts as they spent eight years assembling what would become The Strangest Light, the band’s third album. In the end, distance helped shape the narrative for their latest collection of songs about lives left behind and lessons learned too late.

In 2008, lead singer and songwriter Dan Richmond left Minneapolis to follow his wife to the Balkans. Other members took on new jobs, new relationships, and parenthood. Yet the band found ways to keep working—members would send song sketches back and forth via email, assembling arrangements piece by piece. This process has made The Strangest Light the Ashtray Hearts’ most collaborative record to date. In addition to songs by Dan Richmond, the album includes, for the first time, songs by guitarist Steve Yernberg (“The Strangest Light”) and multi-instrumentalist and harmony singer Aaron Schmidt (“White Church Hill”) as well as key arrangement contributions from bassist Ryan Scheife and percussionist John Jerry. When Richmond landed back in Minneapolis on breaks and during an extended stopover prior to a move to Oregon, the band would pick up where it left off, working out the new material. Eventually, the songs took final shape in the studio in early 2012. The result has become what may be the Ashtray Hearts’ most complete and compelling record: an album inspired by travel, separation, and change, composed of twelve songs about love, loss, and last chances.

On The Strangest Light, the Ashtray Hearts continue to refine the pairing of lush textures and straightforward delivery explored on their first two albums. The record references folk, Americana, and country while embracing the singer-songwriter aesthetic of early 1970s Asylum Records. Yet it retains the band’s signature sound—close harmonies, layered guitars, and eclectic instrumentation. Recorded at the Terrarium in Minneapolis, The Strangest Light captures the warmth of the Ashtray Hearts’ sound, infusing the songs with both hope and heartbreak.

Band members remain scattered in different cities, with Richmond now living in Salt Lake City. Yet this seems fitting. The Ashtray Hearts make music designed for long road trips home, with songs whose slow pulse echoes the rhythm of the highway and lyrics that capture lives moving in different directions. The Strangest Light is both the end of long trip and the signal of a new start.