As Night Palace, Avery Draut crafts mystified indie pop as a singer and songwriter, blending celestial strangeness with orchestral sweetness. On her 2022 debut Diving Rings, Draut and her band redefined the sound through chamber pop instrumentation and gentle sophistipop undertones layered over tracks already defined by intriguing melodic shifts. Night Palace originated after Draut relocated from Athens, Georgia, to New York in 2016. For years prior, she had participated actively in Athens’ independent music community, appearing on stages alongside Kishi Bashi and performing as a member of Eric Bachman’s touring band. The shift from that close-knit setting to New York’s larger scale prompted a fresh creative openness. Draut started composing her own material by jotting rapid notes during work breaks and expanding those fragments into complete pieces. She preserved connections with Athens collaborators and divided her schedule between the two cities while developing the initial Night Palace tracks. Teaming with producer Drew Vandenberg—who had previously shaped albums for Faye Webster, Mothers, of Montreal, and numerous others—Draut captured the dreamlike material destined for her first album. Singles began appearing in 2021, culminating in the April 2022 release of Night Palace’s Diving Rings on the Park the Van label.
