Developed at the Sundance Institute workshops, the film, set in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, explores the bond between a Lakota Sioux brother and his younger sister.

[4] Sister and brother Jashaun and John Winters live with their mother Lisa (Irene Bedard) on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

He is about to graduate from high school and plans to leave the reservation to go to Los Angeles with his girlfriend, Aurelia (Taysha Fuller).

The siblings' father, Carl Winters, dies in an accidental house fire, and they attend his funeral with their mother.

[5] In January 2016, it was announced that Kino Lorber had come on board as the North American distributor releasing the film in select theatres nationwide beginning in March.

The website's critical consensus reads, "A naturalistic drama that quietly earns its emotional resonance, Songs My Brothers Taught Me further establishes writer-director Chloé Zhao as a gifted filmmaker and empathetic storyteller.