Exitmusic

Exitmusic comprises Aleksa Palladino and Devon Church, whose output fuses dream pop with equal measures of emotional intensity and atmospheric delicacy. An actress whose credits encompass the television series Boardwalk Empire and Halt and Catch Fire plus the films Storytelling and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Palladino first began composing music in her early teens, several years prior to launching her professional acting career. Growing up amid an artistic household anchored by an opera-singer mother and painter grandparents, she produced layered, atmospheric arrangements on a four-track recorder that recalled the work of Portishead, Radiohead, and Sigur Rós. Church, for his part, refined his singing and songwriting skills using little more than an acoustic guitar. The pair first crossed paths as teenagers aboard a train in Canada, sparking a long-distance relationship that prompted Church to relocate to New York to join Palladino; they soon began writing and recording together. Their earliest material, the self-released The Decline of the West, appeared in 2008, the same year the couple married. They shifted to Los Angeles to advance Palladino's acting opportunities, yet returned to New York in 2009 after she secured the role of Bohemian mob wife Angela Darmody in Boardwalk Empire. The live configuration of Exitmusic grew to incorporate drummer Dru Prentiss and electronic musician Nicholas Shelestak, supporting a tour with Phantogram that coincided with the October 2011 release of the Secretly Canadian EP From Silence. Their debut album, Passage, which blended newly written material with reworked older pieces, surfaced in May 2012. Although Church and Palladino separated and later divorced after the album's arrival, they maintained their musical partnership. Felte issued the cathartic third album The Recognitions in April 2018.