When Ghost Hounds frontman SAVNT recaps his 2025, it sounds like the plot of a biopic: join a band just in time to open for the Rolling Stones in stadiums, sing on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry and become the subject of a display at a museum.
It’s only fitting, then, that when the seven-piece group creates a song, such as the 11 tracks on their new album “Justified,” it’s bit like making a film.
“It’s a script. It really is a script,” SAVNT surmises during a sit-down interview at the band’s hotel in Manhattan. Primary songwriter Thomas Tull, the singer says, “is just like, ‘I know what this guy had for dinner. I know where he goes to work.’ So it’s very much getting yourself in the mindset of this character. And a lot of times there’s real-life issues or topics that we all can relate to. So it’s easy for me to dive into that. And I think because of kind of my musical lexicon, I can kind of choose what I want to color each song with, and it just seems to work.”
The Pittsburgh-based rock band, which blends country, soul and blues in its eclectic but accessible sound, released the song “Pale Horse” and its cinematic music video simultaneously with the album debut on Aug. 21. In the run-up to the big day, the band released the “Justified” title track and “Sinner’s Prayer.”
Tull formed an early version of Ghost Hounds in the early 2000s, and they made a debut album with Nile Rodgers in 2009, before he shifted his focus to the movie industry, forming a production company that backed blockbusters like “The Dark Knight,” “Inception” and “The Hangover.” He rebooted a new version of Ghost Hounds in 2018 and SAVNT joined some years later.
“I started about two years ago, 2024,” he says. “So based on where I started to now, it just feels like … because when I started four months later, we were opening for the Stones, you know what I’m saying? So I was just like, these are the things that dreams are made of. But with that said, going from the Stones to doing this promo run and being able to really headline our own shows and masses of people are coming out, it just feels like we’re continuing to grow in the right direction.”
Joining SAVNT and Tull, who plays guitar, in the collective that crosses generational, racial and gender lines are guitarist Tyler Chiarelli, fiddle player Kristin Weber, keyboardist Joe Munroe, bassist Bennett Miller and drummer Sydney Driver.
SAVNT was born in Brooklyn and moved to Englewood, NJ, when he was 9. He still has family in Flatbush. I inquire about his earliest memory of wanting to be a singer.
“I love this question. First of all, I was singing Sam Cooke around the house when I was like 6,” he says with a smile. “‘Chain Gang’ is my favorite song, but I don’t believe that it was until maybe when I moved to New Jersey that I was singing at my table [in school], and this girl was like, ‘You should sing this song.’ I said, ‘All right, whatever.’ So I got up to the front, sang it. Mr. Brown was like, ‘I think you could really do this.’ Wow. And I never thought about it like that before because I was singing around the house with my mom, so I thought everybody could do it. So I think that was the first time that I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I do want to be a singer.'”
He had never taken vocal lessons until he joined the band, and now he works with one of the best: “Mama Jan” Smith, whose credits include Usher, Drake, Justin Bieber and Jill Scott.
“She’s really been helping me to get into my voice even more, because I think sometimes with a lot of singers, because the talent is already there, we don’t realize like, what’s the intervals? What’s the space between music, things like that,” says SAVNT. “So she’s really diving into that with me, and so within this blues music, this blues-rock music, I can find new notes and different places to take it.”
Ghost Hounds were featured at the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville, with a Donation Corner exhibition that ran from Sept. 13 through Oct. 31 of 2025. It kicked off with a sold-out AmericanaFest event alongside Keb’ Mo’, where SAVNT presented several of the band’s artifacts to the museum, such as his jacket from the band’s “She Runs Hot” video.
“As somebody who’s a huge believer, you pray for these moments. You wish for these moments,” he shares. “But when God does what God does, it just feels like it’s completely mind-blowing. And to know that we are in a museum right now next to Leon Bridges and Lenny Kravitz and Prince, like, how did I get a seat at this table? But I’m thankful for it, you know what I mean? And the fact that they wanted to highlight us as trailblazers in this space, it really is a blessing.
“I think that as a musician who’s been told, in my solo career, who’s been told that you almost have to conform, as soon as people look at me, they’re just like ‘R&B,’ right?, and I’ve never been that. I love R&B music, but there’s so much more in me, and I never wanted to be boxed in. So I get to be a part of a band that doesn’t do that, and the great part about it is that I get recognized for that, you know what I mean?
“So it’s just a reminder to myself and to other people: Just stay authentic and true to yourself because you never know where it could take you.”
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