When Chai Met Toast Is Coming Home To Kerala with Their New Single 'Dreamland' & Ensuing Album

In 2016, my brother attended a live music event in Kochi and came home raving about a Kerala-origin band. Named "When Chai Met Toast," the only place we could find their music back then was on SoundCloud. But I somehow found whatever was released on social media, Soundcloud, and grainy videos on YouTube, and started listening.

Soon enough, they were the music that resounded in my room. Dare I say, they might have been one of the first Indie Indian bands I obsessed over? It was unbelievable to me to hear a band whose lyrics were so relatable as a Malayali, yet so global in their sound. Suffice to say, I was an early fan.

By next year, When Chai Met Toast released their debut Joy of Little Things, a three-track EP. At the release event in Kochi (a small affair for an upcoming band) in 2017 at Café Papaya, they performed their track Beautiful World to an enraptured audience. In seeing them live, I knew I was bearing witness to the beginning of something incredible.

Beautiful World would eventually turn out to be one of their breakout hits, and the EP a favourite among fans. Even to this day, those tracks are the ones that I still go back to. And that feeling I had back then was right, I had the honour to see When Chai Met Toast's music grow from Soundcloud and intimate gigs to being played to sold-out crowds across the world.

Barely a decade into its inception, When Chai Met Toast is one of the biggest indie acts from India to have made it to a global audience. Having released a few EPs, one album, multiple singles, and done prolific touring, the multilingual indie-folk alternative band have become a renowned name. But at this juncture, they have chosen to pause, to return to where it all began. A month ago, they announced their next chapter with a simple but powerful note on social media: they were coming home. As they wrote on their announcement:

That homecoming takes the form of their upcoming album Small Town, Big Love, Little Homes - an album/project that is equal parts nostalgic, celebratory, and deeply rooted in Kerala. Its first release, Dreamland, is both a sonic and visual ode to home (the band’s own, but also the very concept of it), and sets the stage for the release of a body of work that brings When Chai Met Toast full circle.

A Festival That Wasn’t a Concert

Before Dreamland came out on 20th August 2025, the band hosted something unusual in Wayanad: not a concert, but what they called Nature Tapes Festival - a gathering of just 17 fans. No big stage, no security barriers, no distance between artist and audience. Instead, it was community kitchens, shared meals, late-night jams, and conversations that blurred the line between performer and listener.

“It was more of a community hang than a festival,” the band laughs. “It was us hosting our fans, who’ve been with us through the journey. We cooked, we ate together, and then there was a performance - but it was really about connection.” That intimacy is telling. For a band that has just returned from an expansive touring cycle across the US, UK, Asia, and Australia, this deliberate shrinking of scale says everything about where their heads and hearts are right now.

Writing Through Homesickness

If Joy of Little Things was about discovering joy in the everyday, Small Town, Big Love, Little Homes is about longing for the places and people that make us feel like ourselves. As lead guitarist Achyuth Jaigopal recalls, “The journey started a year and a half ago, right after we finished a big international touring season. That cycle was about our last EP LYTS, which we recorded in the UK with a producer. This time, we wanted to take complete control, do everything ourselves. And as we were writing, what emerged again and again was homesickness.”

Lead vocalist Ashwin Gopakumar adds, “It felt like a full circle. We started our first EP writing about home, and now almost ten years later, we’re writing about home again. But this time, home isn’t just a physical place. It can be people, moments, or even a memory. That idea became the binding thread of the album.”

The songs themselves echo that sentiment. From 'I’m Coming Home' to 'Letter to Anja' (a heartfelt track Ashwin wrote for his sister), to 'Far From Bombay' which captures the desire to escape the chaos of city life, and a romantic track filled with wordplay called 'Baaton'- every track links back to the idea of belonging. But the album’s introductory single, Dreamland is what lights their path back to Kerala, and how; It is celebratory, high-energy, and unmistakably Malayali. With lyrics in Malayalam, Hindi, and English, the track balances Kerala’s warmth and heart with its verdant grandeur - catchy lines with stadium-ready arrangements.

Dreamland Leading Their Way Home

This elevation in their musicality comes not just from the songwriting but from the soundscape itself. For the first time, When Chai Met Toast incorporated Kerala instruments into their production with the track Dreamland. “We had Chenda, Kombu, Elathalam - it was our first time working with them,” recalls keyboardist/producer Palee Francis. “It was a challenge, but it gave the track this huge celebratory energy, and I feel like we have given our all into this track and the album.” The band also worked with celebrated Kerala vocalist Job Kurian and lyricist Engandiyoor Chandrasekharan to help shape the Malayalam verses. The result is a song that feels rooted yet expansive, as at home in a Kochi Onam Celebration as it might be on an international stage.

If the song is a Homecoming, the music video is its visual diary. Directed by Anto Philip, it is a grand but evidently personal music video shot across Kerala - Palakkad, Munnar’s Aruvikkadu, certain markets in Trivandrum, Kochi’s beaches, bits of Thrissur, and even the band members’ own family homes. For the first time, the band’s families are featured: parents, grandparents, siblings, and even Palee’s child all appear on screen. “It’s the most personal video we’ve ever made,” Achyuth says. “And also the most fun - we did things people haven’t seen us do before.” Ashwin laughs, “People expect me to be goofy on screen, but it’ll be fun to see the rest of the band in that mode too.”

The styling, too, is a nod to Kerala’s aesthetics. The band’s live costumes and promotional visuals are based on Panchavarnam - the five colours of Kathakali - reinterpreted through their mum’s pattu (silk) sarees stitched into garments. While the idea was the band's own, they got design help from Revathi (Trivandrum) and styling by Hiba (Calicut), to create outfits that feature motifs like the map of Kerala, rice stalks, kasavu borders, and more in contemporary silhouettes. “It wasn’t easy - pattu sarees aren’t exactly sweat-proof,” Ashwin jokes, “but we think it worked out somehow.”

A Measured Path to Small Town, Big Love, Little Homes

The band is taking a slower, more deliberate rollout for the upcoming album Small Town, Big Love, Little Homes. Dreamland dropped first, with follow-ups planned as standalone singles over the next few months, leading into an India tour in December across major cities. From there, they’ll take the album abroad, to Europe, the UK, the US, and Australia. But even with these larger stages on the horizon, the spirit of the Nature Tape Festival - intimate, community-driven, evoking home sentiments- remains their guiding light, as they hope to host more such events before setting off on a bigger tour. They are also creating thoughtful Merch that their listeners would love, such as a postcard for the upcoming track I'm Coming Home and much more. In talking about this, drummer Pai Sailesh added on - "We're still figuring out the specifics of merchandise and such, but we've have some ideas in the works to release with each track that goes beyond the usual t-shirts. There’s even a book on the album around the process that we’re hoping to release that connects to the themes of the album beautifully.”

From Soundcloud uploads in Kochi to global tours, When Chai Met Toast has carried their sound through countless stages and cities. Yet with Small Town, Big Love, Little Homes, they seem intent on reminding both themselves and their fans where it all began.

And perhaps that’s what has always made them special: that ability to root themselves in Kerala while simultaneously connecting to listeners from across the world. For the fans who once hummed along to their songs in small venues, to the thousands now singing along in stadiums, When Chai Met Toast’s return home is less about nostalgia and more about recognition: that home is not a fixed place, but a feeling carried wherever their music goes.

You can follow When Chai Met Toast here.

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