The Innocence Mission

Karen and Don Peris, who met in a 1980 Catholic-school production of Godspell and later married, lead this Lancaster, Pennsylvania trio with bassist Mike Bitts — thirteen studio albums moving from ’80s alt-pop toward the hushed, intimate dream-folk of Small Planes (2001, What Are Records?). Their earlier song “Bright as Yellow” was picked by NASA as a real astronaut wake-up call aboard Space Shuttle mission STS-124 in 2008 — a rare honor for a band this unassuming. Their thirteenth album, Midwinter Swimmers, came out in 2024.

From the notes for Episode 03 · fact-checked Sep 23, 2026.