Utter depravity smothers love (5)
I believe the answer is:
voice
'utter' is the definition.
(voicing is a kind of uttering)
'depravity smothers love' is the wordplay.
'depravity' becomes 'vice' (I've seen this before).
'smothers' indicates putting letters inside (I've seen this in other clues).
'love' becomes 'o' (In tennis, 'love' means 'zero').
'vice' enclosing 'o' is 'VOICE'.
(Other definitions for voice that I've seen before include "eg Bass" , "Power of speech" , "Sound of speaker" , "Power of speaking" , "Spoken sound" .)