Calling from her home at 7 a.m., before her daily yoga class, Smith says nature is her “main source of curiosity outside of music.” She definitely comes across as quite a hippie—albeit a very grounded one with designs on composing for film and mastering 3D sound. Prior to making music her full-time gig, she worked in landscaping and homesteading. When I suggest that her music is somewhat psychedelic, she instead suggests the term “existential,” explaining that she sees its potential for broad themes and intricate minutiae as being “kind of like the Golden Ratio.” Unsurprisingly, she’s found kindred spirits in Animal Collective; last fall, Panda Bear asked her to open for him, and she’ll tour with the full band this spring.

This affinity for the natural world stems back to Smith’s childhood on Orcas, the largest of the San Juan Islands (population: around 5,000), located just off the northwestern coast of Washington State; her song “Wetlands” mimics the birdcall of the island’s native Swainson’s Thrush. Smith was home-schooled on Orcas, and her mom ran a chapel, where Smith used the piano to write original material from a young age—she regularly annoyed music teachers by focusing on her own compositions instead of assigned recitations. At 13, Smith went through a phase of writing rock anthems. “At that time I was also really into Loreena McKennitt and opera,” she recalls, “so it was this horrible mixture of opera singing over terrible rock samples.” While these early experiments may not have been completely successful, they served a purpose, kick-starting her relationship with synthesizers.

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: "Existence in the Unfurling" (via SoundCloud)

Orcas maintains a culture of mentorships between its older and younger residents, and at 16, Smith was paired with a local film composer, who lent her some Kurzweil samplers and gave her a copy of ProTools. It was her first proper schooling in synthetic instruments and soundscapes. “My mind was blown by just how many textures you could get and how much control you could have,” she says. (Ever since, Smith has always sought out mentors for her work.) She discovered Philip Glass and Brian Eno, and went on to study composition and sound engineering with classical guitar and piano at Berklee, where she started a folk duo, Ever Isles.

But that project was swiftly curtailed after Smith returned to Orcas following graduation, and a neighbor introduced her to the Buchla. “He lent me his system for a year, and I haven’t really touched a guitar since,” she explains. The instrument’s unpredictable quality matched her longstanding subconscious approach to music making, which she discovered in college, learning long pieces by falling asleep to them. Years later, she’s still learning about the Buchla’s endless permutations. Smith is now part of the close-knit Buchla community—she’s currently working on a full-length collaboration with synth pioneer Suzanne Ciani—which evangelizes the synth’s consciousness-expanding properties with cultish enthusiasm. “When I hear any sound in the entire world, I end up thinking, How would I have made that?” she says. “It’s a really fun thought process to go through all the time.”