Kitchen Dwellers will performFeb. 16at the Domino Room in Bend.

Wise River, Montana, is one of those tiny Western towns that straddles a state highway, with a bar, a post office, an elementary school and not much else.

But it holds a special place in the heart of Shawn Swain, mandolinist for the bluegrass band Kitchen Dwellers, who’ll play in Bend next week (see “If you go”).

“It’s just a really cool small town on the confluence of the Wise River and the Big Hole River. There’s not much to it; if you blink, you’re going to miss it,” he said.

“I spent some time there fly fishing over the years, so it means something to me. I don’t know what it is exactly, but it’s a place I really like.”

Wise River, in fact, inspired the title track to Kitchen Dwellers’ new album, which will be released in April. It’s the Bozeman, Montana, band’s third full-length, and first recorded with producer Cory Wong, the prolific Minneapolis musician best known for his work with internet-friendly funk sensations Vulfpeck.

About half of the new album’s songs were written pre-pandemic, Swain said, and the rest were written when Kitchen Dwellers gathered just before going into the studio. After years of playing songs live for months before recording, the band now has a batch of songs that will be new to Kitchen Dwellers fans at concerts.

“It’ll be cool to release stuff that no one has heard,” he said. “That’s a new experience for us.”

The “Wise River” session was the fastest of the band’s career, Swain said, thanks to an extensive pre-production process (“when we got in there, everyone knew their jobs,” he said) and Wong’s brilliant musical mind, which helped Swain, bassist Joe Funk, guitarist Max Davies and banjoist Torrin Daniels track all their parts in about four days.

“Cory said, ‘We’re not going to spend all day doing solos over and over in here. That’s not how you capture the essence of the song,’” Swain said. “So we’d play a part a few times and he’d be like, ‘OK, that’s it. Next part.’”

The result is the tightest Kitchen Dwellers album yet, which lines up nicely with the band’s more mature songwriting perspective. The new tunes focus less on break-ups and relationships and more on sharing stories and experiences from four lives well-lived, Swain said. And sonically, the band’s members went into the process intent on reining in their jammy tendencies a bit and letting their expansive and melodic approach to bluegrass breathe.

“We tried to focus on what the songs were and what served the songs directly. You’re going to see a lot more three- to four-minute songs, as opposed to seven- to nine-minute songs,” Swain said. “It’s just a different kind of vibe. We wanted to try something (a little more) folk-style and see how that goes.”

What: Kitchen Dwellers

When: 9 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 16, doors open 8:30 p.m.

Where: Domino Room, 51 NW Greenwood Ave., Bend

Cost: $18

Contact: midtownballroom.com