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Oct 19, 2021 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Caroline Marchildon

Orchestral indie pop band Night Palace was first born in Athens, Georgia, the outlet for frontwoman Avery Draut’s dreamy pop concoctions. Since then Draut has spent years straddling different worlds. With roots in classical performance and the indie scene, along with creative connections in both Athens and New York City, Draut and her band began to craft their own distinctive chamber pop alchemy.

The band debuted earlier this year with their first single, “Into the Wake, Mystified” and today they’re sharing news of their upcoming debut album, Diving Rings, out February 11th via Park The Van Records. Along with the album announcement, they’ve also shared a new single, “Enjoy The Moon!” premiering with Under the Radar.

Following a lilting lullaby intro, “Enjoy The Moon!” embarks on a fantastical dream-like journey, backed by Draut’s gentle vocal melodies and gracefully swelling strings. The song’s wondrous dreamscape slowly takes form as playful string melodies begin to enlace with the song’s warm dream pop instrumentation. As the song reaches its climax, the strings envelop the piece as a whole, making full use of Draut’s classical background for a starry-eyed instrumental outro.

The layers of the track came together slowly, but make for a triumph of instrumental magic by the end. As Draut explains, “We recorded the orchestral parts of this in a recital hall. It was a piecemeal process, getting two or three musicians in at a time, over several days, sometimes months apart. So I got to experience this incredible build of sounds as the layers I had imagined for so long arrived one by one.”

She says of the song’s inspiration: “On tour one night, I was half-sleeping on someone’s shoulder while watching a curtain of fruit-shaped beads dangle in the breeze of a fan backstage. I loved plastic beaded curtains when I was a kid, and I set this song in the dreamspace that alchemized between my memories and that moment.”

Draut continues, saying of the accompanying video: “In the early stages of the pandemic, Ally (co-director and art director) and I were both totally starved for creative collaboration, and we wanted to make something freaky! She’d come over and sit in my yard in Athens, Georgia. We would douse ourselves in bug spray, and excitedly yell ideas at each other. Early on, we had the revelation,“it’s a horse girl video!”

Athens is a stone’s throw from a million farms, so I took to Facebook, messaging horseback-riding strangers and farmers, asking if I could come “meet and pose with a horse” for a reference picture for my band’s music video. Shockingly, this somehow worked, and I met a horse named “Mr. Clemson Big Guy.” Ally used the photos we took to make a huge, gorgeous horse painting - the centerpiece of the video!”

Check out the song and video below. Diving Rings is out on February 11 via Park The Van Records.