Cooper and Gatlin

Cooper and Gatlin Green are a brother and sister pop duo from Franklin, Tennessee, a quaint town outside of Nashville known for being the perfect combination of small town meets big city. Spend some time around these two and their fondness for each other is evident. It comes through with a playful, needling energy you’d expect from an older brother-younger sister dynamic. Having grown up hanging around their dad’s studio and touring with their mom, they both knew they wanted to do music from a young age.

The family moved to Los Angeles in 2014 and Cooper and Gatlin have spent the past several years honing their craft as songwriters and musicians and perfecting their sound, which draws on their various disparate influences ranging from The Kooks and Nickel Creek (Cooper) to Kevin Garrett and Norah Jones (Gatlin). By forging their inspirations, the duo recently wrote a batch of new left-of- center pop songs that include their electronic-meets-acoustic debut single “Break.”

“Break,” out later this year, is about the stoic face you put on in front of ex- lovers. It plays with the duality of looking all right before someone who has broken your heart. It’s a poignant and relatable feeling, delivered with a fun sound that makes you want to bounce around. “I think it’s good to have layers like that in a song,” Cooper says. “Ultimately we want our music to be uplifting without being cheesy. We want someone to feel better after listening to it, but sometimes that comes from solidarity and feeling like you’re in a similar place as the person who’s singing.”

“We don’t want to drag people down and say, ‘We hate the world!’ or ‘Everything sucks!’ That’s never going to be us,” Gatlin says. “We’re always trying to be redemptive.”