(Photo: Cal McIntyre)

Downton Abbey's Michelle Dockery (Lady Mary) and Michael Fox (footman Andrew Parker) have teamed up for an EP of original songs.
It was announced today (February 16), the duo – to be known as Michael & Michelle in their music career – have signed a record deal with the U.K.'s Decca Records. They will release their debut EP, The Watching Silence, on May 6.
The first song from the EP, "Calming Storm," is out today and available to listen to below.

According to Decca Records' press release, Dockery and Fox began jamming together on the Downton Abbey set after discovering "a shared passion for music." They started playing as a duo six years ago but this is their first record deal.
"The music Fox and Dockery have found together is both classic and utterly timeless," the press release adds. "Though more Nashville Americana than U.K. folk in melody and structure, their impressionistic songs are modern and immediate, free of pastiche, and are shot through with their own London realism."
They aren't the only Downton Abbey stars to have launched a music project. Elizabeth McGovern, who plays Dockery's on-screen mother Lady Crawley, has released several albums with her band Sadie and the Hotheads. 
We'll see all of them in Downton Abbey: A New Era, which opens in U.K. theaters April 29 before being released in the U.S. on May 20.
What do you think of Michael and Michelle's debut single?