Biography

As Exitmusic, Aleksa Palladino and Devon Church craft dream pop that is as emotional as it is ethereal. Palladino, an actress who has appeared on TV shows such as Boardwalk Empire and Halt and Catch Fire, and films including Storytelling and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, 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. When they met as teenagers on a train in Canada, they began a long-distance relationship; eventually, Church moved to New York to be with Palladino, and they soon began writing and recording together. Their first set of songs, The Decline of the West, was self-released in 2008, the same year the couple married. They moved to Los Angeles to further Palladino's acting career, but returned to New York in 2009 once she landed the role of Bohemian mob wife Angela Darmody in Boardwalk Empire. Exitmusic's lineup expanded to include drummer Dru Prentiss and electronic musician Nicholas Shelestak for live shows, including a tour with Phantogram that coincided with the release of their Secretly Canadian EP From Silence in October 2011. The group's debut album, Passage, featured a mix of newly written songs as well as reworked versions of older ones and arrived in May 2012. Following the album's release, Church and Palladino separated and ultimately divorced, but continued to work on their music together. Felte released their cathartic third album The Recognitions in April 2018. ~ Heather Phares, Rovi