Originally from Athens, Georgia NYC-based Night Palace is a shocking alchemy: achingly intense nostalgia meets frothy anticipation of what’s to come. Her debut album ‘Diving Rings’ was announced alongside the ‘Jessica Mystic‘ album track + video, a catchy indie-pop song inspired by the year a close friend spent watching online psychics on YouTube. Draut’s ethereal vocals glide over swelling strings and hypnotic organs interspersed with shimmering indie-rock guitar and pendulum-like rhythm. 

Growing up, Avery Draut (aka Night Palace) would wake to her dad blasting Court and Spark or Nilsson Schmilsson as he danced around the living room, riling the dogs. At school in Athens, Georgia she studied visual art and theatre before focusing on classical voice. Burned out after five years of fruitful but intensive opera performance, she found a Magic Genie™ organ at the thrift store and sat down, for the first time, to write songs of her own.

Draut’s early explorations into the local music scene held magic specific to the artistic incubator of Athens: she duetted on Jackson 5 songs with of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes at her best friend’s wedding, and opened for Kishi Bashi, singing Hebrew folks songs in a chamber ensemble.

In 2016, Draut moved to New York and began composing music for experimental theatre and performing with a new palette of collaborators. She got a job working as a production assistant at The Metropolitan Opera, scribbling timecodes in opera scores. Feeling the familiar inspiration from art forms cooperating, she’d whisper melodies into her phone in the dark of the substage between acts.