The Los Angeles-based act Transviolet is currently on a hot streak. Although still at a relatively early stage in its existence, the group—vocalist Sarah McTaggart, guitarist/keyboardist Judah McCarthy, bassist Michael Panek and drummer Jon Garcia—has already had its music tweeted about by Katy Perry and Harry Styles; its single "Girls Your Age" has over a million streams on Spotify and recently wrapped up a successful tour supporting Mikky Ekko. We caught up with the band members when they rolled through New York City, where McCarthy claims he “had the greatest brunch of his life" in between bites of his BBQ pork benedict to discuss where they started, where they're going and the whirlwind that has been the last year of Transviolet's existence.

How did the band come together?

Paneck: After I graduated from high school my parents moved out to San Diego and shortly thereafter. For two years after they had already moved I was in a band with John and recording Judah's local band in Rochester. Then a few years went by and I ended up moving to San diego with my parents. A couple of months later John moved out and that's when I found Sarah on a band networking Web site. She had lied saying she was living in San Diego but she was really living in the Cayman Islands.

McTaggart: It was actually very true. Mentally I was living in San Diego. Mike contacted me online and asked if i'd be interested in writing a few tracks. He sent me a song, and it had this really innovative production style, so I recorded some vocals with this really shitty microphone I had bought on Craigslist. I sent it back and we started working a few tracks together. I really liked how it turned out, and after a few months of doing that we thought it would probably be a good idea if we lived in the same city. I moved out to San Diego, met the guys, and once I decided they weren't serial killers we decided we could be in a band together. We played a couple of shows and realized that we desperately needed another person onstage to play guitar and do some keyboards, so we hit up Judah because they said that he was cool and I was like, "Let me see how cool this kid is."

McCarthy: I got a phone call at a time in my life where I really needed a phone call. I knew Mike and Jon but had never met Sarah before, and I was out west for two weeks just kind of writing, recording and just playing with them, and when I went back to New York they didn't even tell me if I got the gig. They were like, "We'll let you know, don't call us, we'll call you" kind of thing, and the day i got home I had 24 hours to either re-sign my lease on my apartment or get out, so I ended up putting all of my furniture in my front lawn and in four hours everything I owned was gone. I just packed up my car and five days later they were like, "Okay, you can come out now." I was couch surfing just hoping I wasn't homeless and then I came out and me and Sarah have been best friends ever since.

How did the Self-titled EP came together?

McTaggart: We locked ourselves in this house in Van Nuys, California; Judah was sleeping on the mattress in the living room where we would rehearse…so that was kind of the writing situation. The nice part about living in the Valley is that there are literally no distractions or anything else to do, so we were just writing non-stop and I think we got to about 30 or 40 solid songs written. From there, we decided which ones were going to make the cut and eventually we found the best four, and I think that's how the EP was born. There's a taste of everything: There's coming of age, there's themes of wanting to incite a revolution or being in love or being involved in a relationship where you feel in love and the other person doesn't feel the same. But I think the underlying theme is that we all want to be loved and accepted and I feel like that unifies us all.

Katy Perry and Harry Styles have both talked about how they love your band. Was that unexpected?

McTaggart: When Katy Perry tweeted saying she really liked the lyrics to "Girls Your Age," it was pretty shocking. I was actually childhood friends with her little brother, so I’ve known her since I was really little, but I haven't spoken to her in years. We were literally in the middle of going to a meeting and none of us had been looking at our phones and our publicist came in and was like, "Do you know what's going on right now?" and we were like, "No, what's going on?" and she told us. We were all very shocked and flattered because we all really love Katy Perry—we're huge fans of every song she puts out. Even our tour manager who is super metal loves her! [Laughs] We all amp up for a show by listening to Teenage Dream.

What about Harry Styles?

McTaggart: Harry Styles was crazy too. None of us know him or have any connection, so it was pretty shocking. I actually was rock climbing the day he tweeted our lyrics, so I had been gone for hours when I found out, and I finally looked at my phone, which had been dead and it was totally blown up. My manager and all the guys were texting me, and I was panicking because I thought something horrible had happened. I called Judah and was like, "Is everything okay?" and he was like, "Dude do you seriously not know what's going on right now?" I had no idea what he was talking about. It completely blew up our twitter—we had like 300 followers before it and literally in a matter of hours we had like 3,000; it was just completely crazy. The Directioners are amazing as fans; they completely latched onto us and they've become some of our friends and we really enjoy interacting with them, they're a lot of fun.

Could you talk a little bit about the concept for the video behind "Girls Your Age"?

McTaggart: It was inspired by a conversation I had when I was 17 in the car with my first boyfriend who was a much older boy in college. He looked at me and said I was hot and I told him I loved him and he told me, "Girls your age never mean what they say" and it kind of stuck with me. It's only now that I've been able to articulate very complex feelings that come with coming of age and trying to understand your own sexuality and what you want. I think at that age everyone is telling you who to be, how to feel, who to love and what you should want for yourself, and at the same time you're trying to figure out all of those things for yourself. It's very complicated and it can be violent and I wanted to capture that violence that's coming of age when everyone is pulling you in different directions and you're just trying to get your bearings.

How do you balance the electronic and organic elements when it comes to your music?

Paneck: When we originally started, even before Judah was playing with us, we didn't really have a band so synthesizers were my best friend. I really always loved electronic music and it just kind of naturally incorporated itself in there and it's become part of our sound that we can't really let go of.

Garcia: I think when you use electronic instruments and elements you can get sounds that are familiar but still fresh, and when you hear the sound you recognize the melody but it has a little different tonality and it feels fresher and new.

McTaggart: Yeah, I feel with electronic sounds you can really customize the tone to exactly what you want and it becomes your own—and even the "electronic" sounds we have in our music have an organic start. Very often someone will put down a beat and just one monotonous tone throughout to keep me on pitch and then I’ll improv over the whole thing with melody or funny little sounds and then we'll go in and turn those into synth sounding elements or make them choppy vocals. That's how "Girls Your Age" was built. I was actually running out the door to go to the airport and it was kind of an afterthought after we did the main vocal to sing some noise over the track and see if anything cool came out of it, and that's what ended up making the sound of the hook. So yeah, I think electronic elements give you a lot more freedom than traditional instrumentation.

Where do you see things moving from here for Transviolet?

McTaggart: The full-length is written, recorded and mixed and it's just being mastered right now, so we're releasing it at the beginning of next year. We're kind of ever-evolving, so it's been more difficult to try to keep the same sound throughout the album. I feel like the struggle is keeping everything homogenous because I'm under the belief that every song is its own universe, and I never want to get caught up in the idea of "that's not our sound." I'm more into the school of thought where the message and feel of the song is more important and you shouldn't sacrifice that in order to fit some aesthetic or previous box that you've constructed for yourself. So in that way, you can literally hear how the album goes from a lighter more mainstream poppy feel to this kind of darker more moody, brooding feel, and I think that's kind of where we're headed.