For a band built around the idea of connecting musicians across the entire planet, INTERCONTINEN7AL has always been interested in what happens when distance disappears from the creative process. Now, the project is turning that idea inward with “Lighthouses (Acoustic Remix),” a moody, folk-leaning reinterpretation of the song originally released on the band’s 2022 record, Volume 3.
The story of “Lighthouses” actually began with something much smaller than the international recording project INTERCONTINEN7AL would eventually become. In September 2021, bandleader Matt Smith, born in Freehold, New Jersey and now based in Castle Rock, Colorado, was experimenting with synth effects on his phone when he recorded a one-minute descending bass line in A minor with a trip-hop feel. He dropped the idea into the band’s shared BandLab folder simply to see whether anyone would connect with it.
A month later, Smith’s cousin Alex Burke added haunting piano chords to the introduction. That darker direction immediately suggested something more substantial: a minor-key duet about a relationship slowly reaching its end. Smith wrote the lyrics and vocal melody in roughly 20 minutes, drawing from the emotional weight of his own past relationships winding down.
There was another unexpected moment during the recording process. The vocal take that ultimately appeared on the finished mix was Smith’s very first attempt, recorded directly into his phone’s microphone. Despite trying repeatedly afterward, he was never able to recreate that original performance.
Becca Drayer eventually joined Smith for the female side of the duet, while Argentina-based musician Gustavo Prida rebuilt Smith’s original drum programming and helped shape the finished arrangement.
Two years later, Smith decided the song still had another life waiting for it.
Beginning in October 2023, he started rebuilding “Lighthouses” from the ground up. The original synth bass line was removed and replaced with a slide Drop D acoustic guitar riff, while the song’s melody remained intact. The drum programming was softened into something closer to a brushed kit, and longtime collaborator Marcin Nawrocki of Poland recorded a new bass line to give the acoustic arrangement its foundation.
The process was anything but rushed. Smith returned to the mix repeatedly over the following years, gradually refining the arrangement until he felt the new version was ready to reach a wider audience.
The finished remix reveals a different side of the song. Where the original leaned into electronic textures and darker production, the acoustic version puts the emotional core much closer to the surface. Smith and Drayer’s voices carry the weight of the arrangement, surrounded by acoustic guitar, understated percussion and bass rather than the song’s original electronic framework.
The duet begins with the image of a relationship that once offered direction before moving toward its central metaphor of a light disappearing and a safe harbor becoming impossible to find. That emotional darkness has also drawn comparisons from Alt77, which likened the pairing of Smith and Drayer to the darkly romantic duets of Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell.
That intimacy is an interesting contrast to the story behind INTERCONTINEN7AL itself.
The project began in March 2020 when members of the Columbia, Maryland band Toast were looking for ways to continue making music remotely during the pandemic. Smith’s use of BandLab’s public creator tools eventually transformed the idea into something far larger, connecting more than 30 musicians across 15 countries.
Inspired by the Foo Fighters Sonic Highways concept, Smith set out to find musicians on every continent, including Antarctica. That search eventually led to two researchers stationed there contributing parts to the progressive rock track “Manor Hill.”
The band’s name reflects that global ambition. The stylized “7” is inspired by Tool’s “7empest,” while the project’s catalog has grown to seven volumes of original music. Five original songs across those releases contain instrumentation recorded on all seven continents, with all five collected on the band’s World Over EP.
The project’s global scale, however, has never been the only point. INTERCONTINEN7AL has also built its identity around collaboration and humanitarian causes. Every dollar generated from streaming the band’s music is donated to organizations and causes including Stand Up 2 Cancer, Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, St John’s Hospice, the International Rescue Committee, the International Justice Mission and the GoFundMe COVID-19 Global Relief Fund.
That unusual combination of musical ambition and worldwide collaboration has brought coverage from more than 200 news, music and media outlets, including Rolling Stone en Español, Spin, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Denver Post and Earmilk. The Big Takeover has highlighted the project’s music-first approach, while Earmilk described World Over as an audio journey unlike any other.
Yet “Lighthouses (Acoustic Remix)” demonstrates that INTERCONTINEN7AL does not need its most ambitious concept to make an impression.
There are no seven-continent recording logistics at the center of this version. Instead, the song comes down to a guitar, two voices and the emotional aftermath of a relationship losing its way. After years of musicians contributing from different corners of the world, the project finds something surprisingly intimate by stripping one of its songs back to its essentials.
And that may be the most fitting continuation of INTERCONTINEN7AL’s story. A project created to prove that music can connect people across enormous distances now arrives with a song that focuses on the much smaller distance between two people who once found their way toward each other — and eventually lost it.
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