Great Good Fine Ok

Often the best pop songs happen spontaneously and on impulse. Like A Prayer was written in a day. Sia Furler wrote Rihanna’s Diamonds in just 14 minutes. Brooklyn’s rising synthpop stars Great Good Fine Ok, meanwhile, bumped into each other on the street late last year, decided to harness their intuitive creative spirits, and finished their first song together in one night. The resulting track, the epic ‘You’re The One For Me’ – and its memorable ‘sexy sandwich’ video of a girl getting inventive with her baguette fillings – triggered internet pandemonium and placed the duo firmly at the top of 2014’s New Artists To Watch lists. So remarkable was it that the song also swiped the #1 spot on Hype Machine twice in one month.

Singer/songwriter Jon Sandler and multi-instrumentalist/producer Luke Moellman haven’t looked back since. Their anthemic blend of dreamy electro flutters, R&B beats and lush, expansive pop, which has seen them compared to M83, Phoenix and Passion Pit, has caught the attention of Neon Gold, the tastemaking pop label that discovered has helped break Ellie Goulding, Icona Pop and Gotye. Live, meanwhile, Great Good Fine Ok have whipped up just as much frenzied excitement: their first gig in New York was in a sold-out venue of 300 people and weeks later, at South By Southwest, there were queues down the block for all of their six shows.

It’s only been a short while, perhaps, but Great Good Fine Ok stake their reputation on complex, fully realised, grown-up pop. Bound by a shared appreciation of iconic performers and producers like Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones and Prince, as well as influences as varied as Boyz II Men, Steely Dan and US jam-band Phish, Great Good Fine Ok want to put the soul back into synthpop. Luke, who studied jazz at university, is keen to stress that he isn’t a producer chasing current chart trends. “Pop music from the 70s to modern day is a pretty common thread for us,” he says. “But what sets us apart is that we’re real musicians first.”

Predictably, other acts are lining up to sample of Great Good Fine Ok’s sonic alchemy. While Jon is a born performer, Luke is more at home behind the mixing desk and has been remixing promising indie-dance acts, such as Le Youth, Young Liars, X Ambassadors, Foxes and Monarchy, and his remix of St Lucia’s ‘Elevate’ was premiered on Rolling Stone. Together, Jon and Luke have also been working with The Chainsmokers, the DJ duo behind the worldwide smash ‘Selfie’. Then there’s their own debut record, which they’re already busy putting together at home in Brooklyn. Things are going better than Great Good Fine Ok – more like Great Good Awesome Huge.