John Darnielle, a singer-songwriter from Claremont, California, founded the Mountain Goats. Durham, North Carolina, is where the band is currently headquartered. Despite having a plural name, the Mountain Goats only had Darnielle for many years. Despite remaining the band's core member, he has collaborated with a variety of artists over the years, including Franklin Bruno, Kaki King, Jon Wurster, Matt Douglas, Rachel Ware, Peter Hughes on bass and vocals, John Vanderslice on guitar and Annie Clark on several instruments.
The Mountain Goats were known for doing home recordings in low quality (most notably using a tape deck boombox) and releasing music on cassette or vinyl 7-inch formats. The Mountain Goats have changed their style and now frequently record in studios with a full band. Darnielle adopted the Mountain Goats alias while working as a nurse in a California state hospital. He took the name from the Screamin' Jay Hawkins song "Big Yellow Coat" and he started producing cassette-only records for the Shrimper label. The Mountain Goats only ever released music on cassette for many years, essentially using tape hiss as an additional instrument, despite gaining a devoted underground fanbase (or perhaps because of it).
In Devil House, a third book published by Darnielle, a true crime writer who accepts an invitation to stay at the home of a notorious murder finds more than he bargained for. Darnielle and Matt Douglas, another member of the Mountain Goats, created original music to accompany the narration for the audiobook version. Shortly after the publication of the book, Darnielle began work on the upcoming Mountain Goats album. Bleed Out was produced by Alicia Bognanno of the band Bully, who also performed guitar and keyboards during the recording sessions. The album is a collection of songs about taking revenge and the costs of immoral behavior that were inspired by crime movies from the 1970s and 1980s..

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