NYC power-popgaze band Heaven dive deep into their lush and hypnotic third album ‘Dream Aloud,’ a self-made sonic reverie of love, loss, and lucid dreaming.
Stream: “Dream Aloud” – Heaven
Dream Aloud begins with a jolt: Two sharp drum hits, followed by a tidal wave of reverb-drenched guitars that crash down like a sweaty, shoegazy blanket of sound.
It’s disorienting in the best way — a sudden immersion into a thick sonic haze. Then come the vocals: Heavy, hypnotic, and intimate, Matt Sumrow sings, “I’ll let you in… I’ll let you in, just like always.” It’s a spellbinding invitation — not just into the record, but into Heaven’s world: One as drenched in smoldering sound as it is in evocative, unfiltered feeling.
There’s a dreamlike quality to Heaven’s music that feels timeless and transportive — as if each song were beamed in from a liminal space between memory and imagination. The NYC-based power-popgaze band have always reveled in the textures of shoegaze, psychedelia, and classic rock, but with Dream Aloud, their first LP in seven years, the trio of Matt Sumrow, Mikey Jones, and bassist Sonia Manalili lean fully into both atmosphere and emotion. It’s an album of glimmering guitar washes and spectral synths, grounded in raw feeling and personal reflection. Recorded largely at home during the isolation of the pandemic, Dream Aloud isn’t just a sonic escape; it’s a reclamation — of DIY roots, of creative freedom, and of music’s healing power.
Tide breaks in the morning
And the sea shelves break down
I don’t know who we are again
But i’ll take back breaking in
Searching in the evening
Find a way to dream aloud
I don’t know what you wanted me to find
A way to break down and leave it all behind
– “Dream Aloud,” Heaven
For frontman Matt Sumrow, Dream Aloud was born in a moment of stillness and crisis — but from that came a vision of light. “This body of music was conceived in the depths of the pandemic, when all we could do was stay at home and work on projects and watch the doom of it all on the TV,” he tells Atwood Magazine. “It was created as a vision of hope and dreams, an escape from the reality that was before us.”
“It was also a deliberate move back to a DIY way of making music. Realizing that facing the dire apocalyptic situation we were all in, you have to rely on yourself to make things happen, make art happen, etc. The last record we put out was made in studios, throwing a lot of money at the project with mixed results. With Dream Aloud, the pandemic had started, so I focused on producing music at home. I upgraded my home studio and was able to make most of the recordings at home.”
Following 2013’s Telepathic Love — an ambitious, lush debut that introduced Heaven’s signature blend of shoegaze and psych-pop — and 2018’s All Love Is Blue, a darker and more textural follow-up that doubled down on their affinity for swirling guitars and ambient haze, Dream Aloud marks the band’s long-awaited third full-length release. Where those earlier records drifted between dreamscape and dissonance, this latest LP feels like a fully realized distillation of their sound: Focused, layered, and deeply intentional.
“We feel like this record compared to the earlier ones is more of a concise statement,” Sumrow explains. ”Sonically, it was all recorded together as a body of work in the same way, written together in the same way, etc. The production is more to our liking as well.”
Where their past albums moved between the ethereal and the abrasive, Dream Aloud carves out its own lane — one that’s intimate and enveloping, yet equally expansive.
It’s not just a continuation of their sound, but a re-centering of their identity as a band: Self-produced, self-contained, and spiritually open.
When asked to distill the album into three words, Sumrow doesn’t hesitate: “Sonic. Love. Consciousness.” It’s a fitting phrase for a record that radiates warmth and presence, even in its most melancholic moments. Dream Aloud doesn’t just ask you to listen — it invites you to feel, to float, to exist inside its world.
As for the album’s title, it came about almost subconsciously — a moment of creative transmission rather than calculation. “It appeared as a lyric in the title track, which was named something different at first,” Sumrow says. “Not sure where the lyrics come from, delivered from the ether, but it just seemed fitting for the LP title. Big dreams worn on our sleeves.”
Highlights abound on the journey from the album’s lush and immersive opener “I’ll Let You In” to its cathartic finale, “A Painted Image.” Along the way, Heaven conjure fever dreams, Western vistas, romantic longing, and break-up wounds – all through cascading guitars, hypnotic rhythms, and glistening synths. “Spinning Around You,” with its sparkling synths and hypnotic lilt, stands out as a personal favorite for Sumrow: “It has a lot of space and the synths really shine. It really gives that sense of being on another plane,” he smiles.
The album’s centerpiece, “Dream Aloud,” began as a hushed lullaby — a rough voice memo recorded in the middle of the night — before transforming into a surging, psychedelic rocker. Lyrically, it feels like the audible equivalent of a Tibetan sand mandala: Beautiful and intricate, only to be dissolved and reborn. Its message echoes the spirit of the entire record — one of impermanence, inner vision, and building something meaningful amid chaos.
Another standout moment arrives with “Sun Setting Skies,” a dusty, dream-laced waltz inspired by the vast, otherworldly landscapes of the American West. “I love the way the lyrics of ‘Sun Setting Skies’ came together,” Sumrow reflects. “‘Mountains ahead like the statues have fallen.’ I tried to visualize the amazing geology around southern Utah into lyrical form.” It’s a striking image — and one that perfectly mirrors the song’s wistful mix of wanderlust, isolation, and quiet awe.
From the tender haze of “Sun Setting Skies” to the aching, 15-years-in-the-making release of “A Magic All Our Own,” Dream Aloud is as emotionally resonant as it is sonically expansive. Heaven have never sounded more sure of themselves — or more in tune with the emotional pull of their sound.
And the road goes on forever
into the Sun Setting Skies
and I pleaded with you
for our love forever
as the tears welled up in my eyes
the mountains ahead
like the statues have fallen
the earth waned
a color reflections of the heavens
the silence is waiting
in the echoes of the ancients
and i looked for you there on my right
and i called out forever your name
but it turned out
you were always just one step away
we were dancing
under the sun setting skies
At its core, Dream Aloud is both an offering and an invitation: A shimmering space carved out of chaos, built with intention and heart.
It’s a record that encourages surrender — not to despair, but to feeling, to dreaming, to connection. Heaven may have retreated inward to create this music, but what they’ve emerged with is a sound that reaches outward: Warm, unguarded, and quietly transformative. “We just hope the music finds people and they dig it,” Sumrow says simply. “We hope people love listening to it as much as we love making it.”
Dream Aloud is out now via Little Cloud Records. From the first thunderous drum hits to the final reverb-drenched fadeout, it’s a record that envelops you completely — a swirling, shoegazy invitation to feel deeply, dream freely, and let the sound wash over you.
Experience the full record via our below stream, and peek inside Heaven’s Dream Aloud with Atwood Magazine as Matt Sumrow goes track-by-track through the music and lyrics of the band’s third album!
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:: stream/purchase Dream Aloud here ::
:: connect with Heaven here ::
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Stream: ‘Dream Aloud’ – Heaven
:: Inside Dream Aloud ::
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I’ll Let You In
We tried to conjure MBV’s swirling guitars and added buzzed out synth on this one. Whether its asking for finally opening the closed door of your heart to inevitable pure spiritual love or not, you be the judge.
The Fire You Know
A fever dream of lyrical vision. This song is telling the secret we all know but never say out loud. The warm wool blanket of belief keeping us from the cold of madness. Belief in love, belief in anything.
Dream Aloud
I wrote this one in the wee hours of the morning, recording it into the voice memos on my phone. I forgot all about, and had no recollection of recording/writing it and discovered it a few weeks later. It was a hushed lullaby at first but we turned it into a rocker. lyrically it’s the audible version of a tibetan sand mandala, building something beautiful then distorting it, the cycle of life.
Sun Setting Skies
This song came from the depths of the pandemic, yearning to get out of New York, thinking of the wide open spaces of the American west, a mix of wanderlust and the quest for love as a journey. It is the first Heaven song released in a waltz time signature, and mixing that with the western style baritone guitar lines, ethereal synth and Mikey playing a tom heavy drum beat brought it all together.
Spinning Around You
Really wanted this one to be the most hypnotic track on the record. The keyboards shine behind the guitars. and give everything space to breath. I pictured two people as whirling dervishes spinning around each other seeing if they want to be with one another.
A Magic All Our Own
A break up song if i ever wrote one. This is a song I’ve been workshopping for 15 years, great to have it finally released. Nature and its relationship to our emotions.
I Need You More Somehow
This one came together nicely. Dirty but pretty just like we like it. I gravitate towards writing songs in D A G chords and this is another notch on the belt. One day we’ll put out a record with all songs in the key of D.
I See the Rain
This is a cover of one of my favorite songs from the 1960s psych era in England, a song from the band The Marmalade. I tried to do the original justice but bring it into the modern era. Probably my favorite guitar solo i did on the record is on this track.
Spinning Around You (reprise)
We originally recorded two versions on “Spinning Around You” one faster, one slower. I liked both so we kept the faster one as an instrumental. Love how this one makes me feel like a sunny day.
A Painted Image
This the closest to a Beatles song on this record. I used mellotron string parts to evoke the 60s.
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:: stream/purchase Dream Aloud here ::
:: connect with Heaven here ::
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© 2025Dream Aloud
an album by Heaven
