Chromeo Almost Worked With Dev Hynes On Their ‘White Women’ Album

are no strangers to collaboration; since their breakout record ‘She’s In Control’ was released back in 2004, the Canadian duo have stacked up quite the list of artists willing to lend their vocals to tracks across their discography. Whether it be La Roux’s Elly Jackson, or Solange Knowles, they’re unafraid to get a little help from their friends. With their forthcoming new album ‘White Women’, they’re showcasing the talents of their peers once more.

“I knew Ezra was gonna be on there because he had that song that he wrote and I always wanted to put it on a Chromeo album,” offers up one half of the electrofunk pair, Dave 1, explaining how the Vampire Weekend frontman came to contribute. “Chaz came later. Pat Mahoney at LCD was when I saw him performing with the band at Madison Square Garden. It was a wishlist kind of thing. Solange - we had her on the last record so in the back of our minds we knew it would make sense, but it evolves. There are people that we worked with on the last record that we didn’t get a chance to work with before.”



Both Ezra Koenig and Chaz Bundick, of Toro Y Moi, were also challenged with pushing their limits on their offerings, as Dave explains. “We were in the studio, I freestyled the lines and [Ezra] was like, that works. What’s cool about that song is he’s never done a falsetto that high. Chaz, too. He never sings like that on his own records. I want to bring certain performances out of people. I’m gonna do it - as we move on, we’re going to do more collaborations. It’s too fun, bringing people into the Chromeo realm. It’s fun for listeners and it’s fun for us.”



Collaborations aren’t the only thing that Chromeo are hoping to explore nowadays. Their sights are set on new means of connecting their work to artists. “The idea for us now is opening ourselves. We did three albums in a vacuum and this record was way more open. Even when it’s not a collaborator, we’re looking out for remixers. On the ‘Jealous’ single we have Class Of 2007 alumni like Boyz Noize, and then we have the Chainsmokers, but only we could pull that off. Who else in our scene could connect those dots? And despite the quirkiness or cheekiness of our music, despite the fact that we look like cartoon characters, we do get respect.”



As for anyone they might’ve wanted to get some airtime on ‘White Women’, but didn’t quite pull it off? “I love Blood Orange,” he admits. “He was supposed to be on the record. We talked about it but we could never get our schedules to align. We’re gonna do s**t with him. I really think Dev is doing everyone a huge favour by not going on tour, because if he went on tour full-time he would be ending so many people’s careers, including ours. So thank you Dev, seriously. I would basically be his guitar tech if he ended up going on tour!”

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