There’s a nice picked acoustic guitar. There’s the passing slide of an electric.

And then there’s the most beautiful, resonant voice singing about porch swings and backyards.

This is “Mudroom” by Tiny Habits.

They are Maya Rae, Cinya Khan, and Judah Mayowa and they all sing a verse on this thrilling and meditative new song. But more than that, their equally beautiful (and dreamily similar) voices pick careful moments to harmonize with one another.

There’s a lazy, hazy feel to the song that is quite addictive. All the instrumentation is muted to the essence of what is needed to let those three beautiful voices wind around the music and take center stage, singing about what initially would seem to be about going into the house after having been for a stroll.

But that would be to take it too literally.

“Mudroom” is about stepping into a different place in your life – choosing a different path, starting again.

It seems as if the mudroom is a time machine. They walk in from a beautiful morning and find themselves in that interim room, the room that leads from a puddle-laden walk to a warm kitchen. The short walk that leads from a messy past to a possibly bright future.

In the harmony-soaked breaks from the verses, they visit this future and show you what they are scared to embrace:

But I see the warmth inside you
Kitchen towels and Christmas lights

And later:

Does hesitation to a good thing
Mean the wounds need more healing…

But the feeling of the song can perhaps best be described with this lyric:

I need a minute in the mudroom

The song is wracked with patience, liminal space, and nostalgia. But it doesn’t end with that. A pretty piano motif breaks up verses, and returns at the end of the song where we get a conclusion of sorts:

Grab my coat and take off my shoes
Go inside and leave the mudroom 

Grabbing a coat implies they won’t be staying. But then, taking off shoes and leaving the mudroom suggests that they are finally going to stay. It’s an ambiguous way to end, attractively accompanied by a little more descending piano that sounds hopeful.

The end of the song fades to the sound of kids playing. Perhaps in the course of this beautiful song, they’ve started events in motion that can’t be undone. They’ve moved on and the sound of their future is already there, waiting for them in the warm house they’ve finally walked into.