Night Palace is a shocking alchemy: aching nostalgia meets frothy anticipation of what’s beyond the garden wall. Tantalizing pop melodies take wing with lush instrumentation, a bed for Draut’s softly shimmering vocals. It’s hard to believe Night Palace’s first album Diving Rings is not a soundtrack to . . . something. You find yourself picturing it: a moonlit-gilded diorama of songwriter Avery Draut’s dreams and memories. The songs on Night Palace’s upcoming debut record Diving Rings might be found on a playlist among Broadcast, Alvvays, Vashti Bunyan, and Mort Garson’s Plantasia.

Growing up, Draut 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 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.

In 2016, Draut moved to New York. She maintained her connection to Athens, watering roots in two artistic ecosystems. Her songs would fall into place on long solo drives down the east coast in her grandma’s old Buick.