Elenowen

The husband-and-wife writing and singing team of Josh and Nicole Johnson make up the Nashville-based country-folk-rock duo Elenowen (named after Josh's mother and Nicole's father and pronounced "ellen-owen"). The couple met and fell in love in high school, marrying during Josh's freshman year at Nashville's Belmont University. Both pursued separate singing and music careers until 2009, when they joined forces after hearing Robert Plant and Alison Krauss' Raising Sand album. Realizing a vision that was somewhere between country, folk, and pop, the duo released a debut album, Pulling Back the Veil, a year later in 2010. Selected to appear as contestants on the television show The Voice, Josh and Nicole were mentored by country singer Blake Shelton and picked up hordes of fans from their appearances on the show, even though they were eventually cut — by Shelton as judge, no less. Never really a country act in the strict sense, Elenowen honed their haunting folk-rock sound, and writing both individually and collectively, released the self-titled EP Elenowen on Dualtone Records in 2012.