I’ll Never Know – Exitmusic

Exitmusic, the Brooklyn-based duo of Aleksa Palladino and Devon Church, craft dream pop that is as emotional as it is ethereal. Palladino, who is also an actress and stars as bohemian mob wife Angela Darmody on HBO’s Roaring Twenties drama Boardwalk Empire, began writing songs while in her early teens, just a few years before she started acting professionally. Raised in an artistic family that included her opera singer mother and painter grandparents, Palladino experimented on her four-track recorder, creating layered arrangements that evoked atmospheric acts such as Portishead, Radiohead, and Sigur Rós. Meanwhile, Church developed his singing and songwriting with little more than an acoustic guitar. The pair met when Church moved to New York after spending a year teaching English in India and Taiwan, and soon began writing and recording together. They spent a year learning recording software and experimenting with sounds before playing shows; their first set of songs, The Decline of the West, was self-released in 2008, the same year Church and Palladino got married. The pair moved to Los Angeles to further Palladino’s acting career, but returned to New York in 2009 once she landed the Boardwalk Empire role. Exitmusic’s lineup expanded to include drummer Dru Prentiss and electronic musician Nicholas Shelestak for live shows, including the tour with Phantogram they embarked upon in October 2011, which coincided with the release of their Secretly Canadian EP From Silence. The group’s debut album, Passage, which expanded on From Silence’s moody feel, arrived in May 2012 ~ Heather Phares