The first thing you should know about Dash & Will is that they are giant big fibbers – the duo’s names are NOT Dash & Will. Far from it, in fact.

Instead, they’re a duo of 18-year-old singer/songwriters from Melbourne, whose real names just happen to be Charlotte Thorpe (otherwise known as Dash) and Josie De Sousa (a.k.a. Will). Their performing names, Dash & Will, are the names they each would have been given had they been born boys.

But, if that were so, there’d be no Dash & Will. Confusing, no?

Well, it’s easier if you think about it this way – the duo are the latest pop-rockers to emerge from pop mastermind Barry Palmer’s production stable. Formerly of Hunters & Collectors and Deadstar, now a producer in Melbourne (immortalised in an ABC documentary series that aired some years ago), the duo came to his attention as Barry’s son just so happened to attend the same high school as Charlotte and Josie – an alternative arts-based school in inner-city Melbourne.

For their debut album, they’ve cleverly licensed their work, instead of signing a direct album deal with a major label – it means that they’re in control of their own destiny.

“We retain a lot more of control that we would if we were signed direct to Universal,” explains Charlie (Or Charlotte. Or Dash. Whatever!) of their label’s involvement in the project. “We deal with all the creative side of our music and that’s all done through us in Melbourne rather than through studios that Universal has booked out – we deliver them our music finished and done, and that’s how we want it to sound.”

The label in question that the girls are signed to, Gigantically Small, is indeed Barry Palmer’s label. “We signed to his label when we were 16,” she confirms, “and we’ve been with him for a little while now.”

Barry is a renowned workshopper – he works assiduously to get the ‘right’ sound for each of his artists, meaning that there’s a consistency across the board when the final product is finally delivered for the end-consumer to devour. For Dash & Will, who were still school girls when they began working with him, that meant recording in different stages. 

“It was the end of Year 11 when we went into the studio to do the first round of songs for the album,” she says. “We didn’t know if they’d be on the album – we just went in to do 5 tracks that we could use [as an introduction for] the music industry. But when we were in the studio our sound got really distinct and we worked out how we wanted to be, and how we were going to perform on stage.”

From there, the girls went back to school and completed Year 12, before heading back into the studio once exams were completed, nailing new material and finalising older numbers.

“We’re absolutely stoked with the album,” Charlie enthuses. “It defines who we are, and our image, and it just FITS perfectly – I don’t even listen to it and go ‘oh, who are we?’. It’s all very distinctive and it’s all very different from your ‘average’ pop.”

Needless to say, given their make-up, Dash & Will have automatically drawn comparisons with sister-groups the Veronicas and Tegan & Sara. Their influences, however, are far more esoteric than the former, with the likes of the Strokes, Klaxons, Camille, and Arctic Monkeys sitting alongside the likes of the latter above-mentioned Canuck dynamic duo.

“People are going to generalise when they see two young girls,” she says of the labelling the nü-Veronicas, “and they’re very distinct in their twin, two-girl-ness. People are always going to draw that comparison and that’s fine – but we’re just trying to get across that we are quite different and we do have a different sound of music. Me and Josie don’t in any way try to be like each other – we’re different people and we don’t have the same personality, and it just happens that we work really well together and our music works really well together.”

Dash & Will’s first single “Pick You Up” is out now, with the album due later in the year.

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