-- How did you get the name Telepathe?

B: We chose the band name because of a conversation we had about this one woman we'd heard of, who lives in New York. She calls herself a "pet communicator" and she can, supposedly, talk to animals and find out their problems. (laughs) Apparently she sort of finds out if the pet is having emotional problems and tells the owner so that they can have a better relationship.

M: It's kind of trippy to think about. I'm into it!

B: I love the concept--the whole idea of psychic abilities. We already had an interest in it and so we just chose it as our band name.

-- I’ve read that you don’t like to categorize your music. However, how would you describe your style to readers who aren’t yet familiar with it?

M: It sounds like everything and nothing else at the same time. It’s a mash-up of different things. For instance, I really like the syncopated rhythm of hip-hop, which we listen to a lot. We also listen to a lot of melodic music, like Kate Bush or Cocteau Twins--really melodic guitar stuff. So one day we were like, "Let's take these rhythms that we really love and let's take all these melodies and put everything in each song! Let’s take all these elements from the music we love and put it into our music!"

B： I’d say our music is new pop--new dance. Some people call us "pop avant-garde".

M & B: …but we’re not!

M: We're still learning. We're students of pop music. It wasn't a thing that came naturally to us.

B: We used to make crazy improvised music with very little structure...

M: ...and that got boring very fast.

B: So we've come from that background, and now we're taking that history and those ideas and...

M: ... flushing it all down the toilet! Forget all that! (laughs)

-- I wanted to ask you about your lyrics. Can you give us some hint as to what they mean?

M: Well, neither of us was ever a lyricist before but, now, that aspect has become a really big part of our music. On top of that, we've started working on vocal arranging and harmonies, which can be embarrassing. But early on we would just write the music first and then write the lyrics and sing over it. Usually, we'll do this thing called "Exquisite Corpse".

-- What is that?

B: It's a game that art students sometimes do. Someone starts by making a drawing and folding the paper, and then another person adds to the drawing and folds it, just so you always see a little bit. That’s what we would do that with our lyrics. Not every single song, but we did on “Michael”, for example.

M: We both read a lot and I write a lot. I'll read something and be totally captivated by a really vivid phrase and it’ll inspire lyrics in me.

B: We make this crazy list of cryptic, nonsense--visual stuff--and we edit it down and try to make a narrative out of it. We try to put in a hook. We try to make sense out of it, like it is sort of a narrative.

-- Do you think that your sexuality is reflected in the lyrics?

M: Yeah! I mean, not intentionally but definitely unconsciously, for sure.

B: Sexuality and being female.