On their new full-length record, Dust and Disquiet, Caspian is saying something. “We’re wide awake now,” we hear in the album’s dead center, track five’s “Run Dry.” This isn’t the first time Caspian has sung a line of discernible lyrics, but the clarity—in the tone and thematic sentiment of both the track and the whole record—has never demanded so much attention.

In part, the line is a response to their last record, 2012’s presciently titled Waking Season—an acknowledgement that even they didn’t know what changes that waking process would mean. In the three years since, the band suffered the tragic death of founding bassist Chris Friedrich, and thus felt torn between grief’s desire to hide away from everything and yet knowing immediately that the band needed to continue. But going on meant maintaining a grueling tour schedule, with the members vacillating between elation and utter exhaustion. “Traveling can create a feeling of separation at times,” says guitarist and founding member Phil Jamieson. “After a while, you can forget why you’re out there in the first place. Deciding to do another record after all that was a move to reclaim for ourselves why it is that we do all this: Music is our strongest antidote to feelings of emptiness and disquiet.”