Lion Babe on working with Pharrell, Mark Ronson and developing their sound

The New York duo hit six million streams for their first EP. No wonder Pharrell and Mark Ronson are on board

One half of Lion Babe Jillian Hervey

One evening in February, in a side-room of the Chiltern Firehouse hotel and restaurant in London, waiters served fried chicken and white wine to music-industry honchos. The hotter-than-thou London venue was hosting a showcase set by the New York City duo Lion Babe.

With showtime approaching, people shed their shoes to stand, sock-footed, on gold velvet banquettes at the back of the room. Craning forward, one woman whispered to a friend: “If it weren’t for this, I’d never be able to get in here”.

As tuxedo-wearing waiters scuttled around with champagne bottles in ice buckets, Jillian Hervey, 25, and Lucas Goodman, 26, played five songs including breakthrough track “Treat Me Like Fire” and their new Pharrell Williams-produced single, “Wonder Woman”.

While Goodman – pout-lipped, staring studiously into middle distance – marshalled the music on his Akai Music Production Controller (MPC), Hervey kicked, bent and twisted as she sung. With her golden mane, she is Lion Babe – her performance drawing a compelling dynamism from her dance-school training.

The choice of venue was fitting. Soon after meeting at a party, Goodman and Hervey – both native New Yorkers – uploaded “Treat Me Like Fire” to YouTube in December 2012. Sampled in large part from a 45rpm single of the soul ballad “At the Hotel” by Eunice Collins, which Goodman came across while working at a record label, it simmers with a louche, summery cool.

Wild things: Jillian Hervey and Lucas Goodman of Lion Babe

The track created enough buzz to land them a record deal and garner deserved hype – their six-track EP notched up six million online streams. The set done, the two circulated, shaking hands and receiving warm praise. Then, we headed upstairs for the interview. “This is the nicest hotel room I’ve ever been in,” says Goodman, plonking himself down on a low sofa next to Hervey.

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First up, Pharrell Williams. “Wonder Woman” packs a powerful pop punch, thanks in part to his impeccable production. Producers they are working with include Jeff Bhasker, Mark Ronson and Dave Sitek. Did the duo have any concerns that Lion Babe’s budding sound might get overshadowed by the distinctive styles of these big names?

“They’ve all been like, ‘we just want to bring our thing to it’,” says Goodman. “Even Pharrell, he’d be like, ‘OK here are my parts’. We’d take them back and write to them and add to them and email them back. It was a real dialogue. Everyone was really cool, giving us the freedom to put our own thing on it.”

He’s right, of course – a good producer works around the artist. While their sound might share in the ephemeral style of the moment – somewhere between Blood Orange and Sohn – it wasn’t about to be washed away by these big names. As something of a bedroom DJ, under the moniker of Astro Raw, Goodman has been putting in the hard work that forms the foundations of Lion Babe since 2009. Their sound comes from a meeting of the music they were both brought up on – “Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, Stones” – and the infinite possibilities opened up by the internet. “As long as you dig you can find anything,” says Goodman.

New York duo Lion Babe

“New, old, something on SoundCloud that just came out seven hours ago – some random kid in his bedroom making a beat – or some Dionne Warwick record you never heard.” Throughout the interview, one of the pair picks up the baton when the other lags. Now Hervey jumps in. This pick-and-mix approach, she says, reflects “the New York mindset of a little bit of everything.

“I think it really has a lot to do with being New Yorkers and coming from that landscape of a big melting pot of cultures, sounds, colours, people,” she says. A Tribe Called Quest and the NYC-centric Native Tongues movement unmistakeably runs through what they do. These inspirations came together in the musical crucible of late- 1990s early-2000s pop. “They’re almost like the golden years for us,” says Goodman. “It was Neptunes and Timbaland, and all those indie-rock bands like the Strokes and the White Stripes.”

Originally meeting at a party in Boston, it was in New York City that they reconnected. Goodman grew up around St Mark’s Place in the East Village – “a proper Manhattan boy” jokes Hervey, who grew up in a well-to-do suburb of the city. They both have the knowing, well-groomed style of city kids – he with his just-so distressed leather jacket and her in a loose, knitted sweatshirt. He was in his first year of university and she in her last at college.

Goodman was playing his music at a party. Hervey introduced herself and, later on, when she needed a track for a dance piece, got back in touch. “I was like, ‘I want something that’s jungle sounds, has drums and works with my dancing’,” she says.

Before long, Goodman suggested she add vocals to one of his tracks. Hervey was initially reluctant. It was an especially daunting ask, she says, as she came from an “entertainment family”. Her mother is Vanessa Williams, a successful singer and actress in the US and who has topped the Billboard R&B charts. “When we first did ‘Treat Me Like Fire’, he was playing the beat but when I tried to mumble the rhythm, I went into my room and closed the door. I said, ‘you can’t come in – only my dog can hear this!’”

Her breakthrough came when she realised that, while her dancing was a product of training, she could sing without vocal coaching. “I needed to do it the way I wanted to do it,” she says. “Going to college, the goal is to find yourself and at that point I did find myself. I felt: ‘OK, now I can do this. I can write my own stuff and I’m ready to be my own person’.”

Laying down the vocals for “Treat Me Like Fire”, it was to Chaka Khan, Stevie Wonder and Nina Simone that she looked for inspiration. The track is exhibit A for their old-meets-new approach.

Cutting up the Collins record, Goodman quickly identified the main refrain and pulled the track together around it – keeping in the aural texture of the vinyl. “The scratchy sound, that’s only there because the record was so messed up,” he says. “The song was out of tune and warbly.”

“Wonder Woman” comes with the same satisfying vintage heft, while Pharrell’s production has glossed it all in delicious funk-flecked pop brilliance. Presuming Goodman and Hervey have found the same sweet spot with Bhasker, Ronson and Sitek, their sound looks set to be an accompaniment to the summer of which Tribe would be proud.

Lion Babe’s new single, ‘Wonder Woman’, is out on 26 April. They tour the UK in May