John and Luke Tuttle are lighting up the Hoosier state with their fresh synth-pop sound as the emerging electronic-pop duo, Dream Chief. The cousins started out playing covers at local coffee shops around Indy and released their first EP Live Alive, which helped land them a spot in the Top 24 on VH1’s competition Make a Band Famous. Now they are back in Indianapolis playing as many shows as they can book and gearing up for the release of their new EP due out this June. Indy, it’s time to dance.

“There’s nothing more exhilarating for us than when we get on stage, make music and see people dance to our music,” Luke said.

The duo, formerly known as John & Luke, created their first EP Live Alive completely on their own, which is available for free on their website. It’s an impressive debut effort driven by strong guitar riffs, piano melodies, and catchy synthesizers. It’s a successful indie pop project sprinkled with 80’s synth-pop sentiments. The track “Everytime” is the highlight of the project and is the duo’s favorite track and the first track they completely collaborated together to create. “Everytime” has a strong dance vibe highlighted by glittering guitar solos.

A year ago, the duo entered a competition for the VH1 special Make a Band Famous, which gave unsigned artists the opportunity to compete in a series of challenges for a record deal with Republic Records. Thousands of bands across the country submitted music for the competition and only 24 finalists were selected to fly out to New York City, including Dream Chief, who at the time were known as John & Luke. Dream Chief performed for the judges, but unfortunately did not advance to the final 12 bands.

“It was so surreal to be there with all of those fabulous musicians. To have that sort of spotlight put on us, we’ve never experienced that before. It was a motivation to push forward,” John said.

The duo returned to Indianapolis motivated to perfect their sound and performance. And while working on new music they realized their new material wasn’t represented by the name John & Luke so the duo evolved into Dream Chief. Their most recent single, “Who Knows,” is a funky synthesizer driven dance track. The song has a spooky appeal that meshes perfectly with dazzling synth sounds, check out the visual below.

The duo plans to release their second EP in June, which has more depth and story to it than their last release. Fans can also expect to see two new visuals for their upcoming singles “I Don’t Know Why” and “Electricity” out later this summer. Until the EP release, the duo will be playing shows around Indianapolis featuring some of their new music.

Dream Chief will join other emerging artists May 9th for the Indy-based music and arts festival UPRSNG, which you can still snag tickets for on the festival’s website. You can also catch the duo opening up for local musician Jason Aaron Coons later this month at the HiFi in Fountain Square on May 22^nd.

Buy tickets to Jason Aaron Coons EP release party with special guests Dream Chief here!

Follow Dream Chief on Twitter: @DreamChiefMusic

Written By: Warren Cangany