Formed just two years ago by Gabrielle Wortman and Jason Rosen, Smoke Season is quintessential Los Angeles electropop — evoking images of film noir and traveling grimy, endless freeways at night. Since their debut EP Signals in 2013 and the release of Hot Coals For Cold Souls a year later, Smoke Season has been featured on two Spotify playlists, and have garnered more than 3 million plays around the world. Wortman and Rosen talk to Myspace about LA’s artistic renaissance, whether they have sexual chemistry as a duo, and their songwriting process.

Hometown: New York

Homebase: Los Angeles

Why are you called Smoke Season?

Smoke Season (n.) – A period of time defined by that which is evanescent, undefined or without result.

Example: Until I heard the music, I was stuck inside a smoke season.

How did you all meet?

Our old bands shared a rehearsal space and then one day we accidentally wrote some music together. That song because our first single, “Soleil.”

How does living in Los Angeles help you create music?

Los Angeles is going through a really amazing artistic renaissance right now. Living in Silverlake, we’re surrounded by likeminded musicians who are constantly supporting the east LA music community. There’s so much love and support for creating music here that really blossomed in the past decade.

People always assume that musical duos are also romantically involved. Is there a sexual chemistry between you two that helps you make Smoke Season's music?

We both love sex and we both failed chemistry in high school. That’s all we have to say about that.

What one thing most influenced Smoke Season as a band?

The core of Smoke Season’s art will always be imbedded with our experiences in California. As east coasters who moved west, California holds a sense of wonder and adventure that continues to inspire us. It’s a bit of a personal manifest destiny.

Describe the moment when you realized you wanted to make music for a living.

There was never a moment where we didn’t.

Who would you love to collaborate with?

In a perfect world, we could have a jam session with Son House, Thom Yorke, Tame Impala and Hundred Waters. And we’d love to tour with Die Antwoord or Gogol Bordello because that’d just be an insane party.

Were you in other bands before?

Gabrielle was in an electronic group called TEMP3ST and Jason was previously in a pop-rock band called Honor Society.

How did your former bands lead you to your sound as Smoke Season?

You can hear TEMP3ST’s influence on our writing style in the way we use beats and electronic drums in almost all our songs. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Honor Society did a lot of work with harmonies and we still call upon Jason’s experience in that when writing vocal parts.

How would you describe your music to someone who's never heard of you?

Electro-soul with a hint of whiskey and a warm desert night.

Do you have day jobs? Do they help you make music for the band?

We both do a lot of work in the tech world building apps, websites and consulting on digital marketing. Everything we do always overlaps with what we do with our band.

Tell us about "Bees" -- is it a single to promote the album that you're currently working on?

“Bees” is the gift we dropped to our fans while we work on our most ambitious project to-date. Let’s just say our new album is more than just an album and pretty top-secret.

What's your songwriting process like?

It usually starts with a beat or a riff and evolves from there. Gabrielle has a habit of singing jibberish while she works out the vocal melody and then all of a sudden at the end of the process we realize that the jibberish actually makes sense. It’s a very stream of consciousness writing approach.

You have really cinematic videos... who conceptualizes them and how much input do you have in the look of your videos?

Both of us studied film scoring at school so we consider the video component of Smoke Season to be a critical part of our art. We come up with nearly all of the video concepts, but are amazingly blessed to have met the guys at APLUSFILMZ – who we’ve worked with on the “Bees”, “Opaque” and “Badlands” videos. It’s a rare thing when you meet people who have very similar taste to yours within a different field. Those guys are incredible at what they do and straight geniuses.