Explosions In the Sky

Explosions In the Sky’s music is just as dramatic as the Austin, TX band’s name: a widescreen strain of epic, instrumental post-rock whose lush atmospheres and dramatic crescendos have made them a familiar presence on film and television soundtracks. Originally called Breaker Morant, the group—drummer Chris Hrasky and multi-instrumentalists Mark Smith, Michael James, and Munaf Rayani—came together in 1999, when bands like Mogwai and Godspeed You! Black Emperor were injecting rock with an outsized dose of the sublime; Explosions In the Sky responded by leaning into both the loud and the quiet, cycling between passages of ambient calm and violent turbulence, to unusually cathartic ends. Following their 2003 breakthrough album, The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place, they were tapped to record the soundtrack to 2004’s Friday Night Lights; they’ve since become music supervisors’ secret weapon for scenes requiring some extra emotional juice.