‘Sometimes I feel like our shows are the one place where nerdy kids can come hang out and see good-looking girls,” laughs Patrick Gemayel from his home in Montreal.

Better known as P-Thugg, Gemayel is one half of electro-funk band Chromeo, supplying the analog synths and talk box action while his long-time best friend David Macklovitch, a.k.a. Dave 1, plays guitar and sings.

The two have been making music together since their early teens — playing in bands and later producing hip-hop tracks — but Chromeo is the project that has won them their most diverse audience, with fans ranging widely in age and social status, from geeks to glam girls like Nicky Hilton. It seems that just about everyone can get into Chromeo’s insanely hooky, smoothed-out loverboy funk and its overt, giddy references to ’80s music icons including Prince, Hall and Oates, Supertramp and New Edition.

“We recycle stuff and we put it up to date and do our take on it, but our music can be understood almost mathematically if you listen to a lot of ’80s music,” Gemayel admits without hesitation. “It’s not like a big mystery. We’re not like Björk; I really don’t understand what her influences are although her product is good and original. We’re from a hip-hop background so what we do is like sampling — it’s taking a certain snippet of this or that song or influence, putting it all together and making a Chromeo song — but we actually play everything.”

Their original instrumentation, playfully reflective lyrics and genuine adoration of ’80s synth-pop and new jack swing keep Chromeo stepping this side of cheese, but the duo certainly have had to counter the assumption that they were mere jokesters since their debut album, She’s in Control, dropped in 2004.

“There are a lot of ’80s irony bands, but at the end of the day, if you’re not sincere and if you don’t have a true passion and love for what you do, you won’t last,” offers Gemayel. “We really love what we’re doing and this is the music we enjoy the most so we can go one, two, four albums deep and we’ll still have something to say musically. We’re not just putting together a greatest hits of ’80s clichés and then wondering, ‘Oh, what do we do now?’”

Last year’s sophomore album, Fancy Footwork, made that clear. Gemayel and Macklovitch dug deeper to broaden their musical reference points, pick up the tempos and, most of all, write strong melodies within classic verse-chorus-bridge song structures. Polished and infectious, the album and its singles “Tenderoni” and “Bonafied Lovin” have won Chromeo a legion of new fans. They’re now touring constantly, performing at larger venues and huge festivals like Coachella, and though their music sounds nothing like it, are being booked alongside big electro, house and nu- rave acts.
“We definitely feel closer to all of this than we did to electroclash four years ago,” laughs Gemayel. “Even a couple of years ago, it could be really weird at times because we’d get matched with bands [at shows] and had no idea what we were doing there. All of the guys doing this new type of music right now — like Sinden, Switch, Justice, Surkin and all the kids from France — they understand what we do and are fans. If we had to be put somewhere, it’s definitely with that type of crowd.”
Still, despite the fact that Chromeo rolls with DJ Mehdi and many in France’s Ed Banger camp, and are tight with the Fool’s Gold family (Dave is older brother to Alain Macklovitch, a.k.a. DJ A-Trak, one of the Fool’s Gold founders), Gemayel resists the notion that Chromeo is tied to any specific music community.

“We came up being totally against the grain,” he reminds. “The first album was totally against everything that was happening back then and the same is true of Fancy Footwork.

“If you think about it, that album came out in a time where you had Justice, MSTRKRFT and all kinds of loud, distorted dance and techno music. Everything was dirty and aggressive and we came out with a smooth approach, clean vocals, clean sounds and a lot of reverb — kind of the Quincy Jones approach to things. So we’re always on the total opposite end of the track and I think we fill a gap.”

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