“It’s a Way of Life.”

For Mike DeLay and Leilani Francisco, that’s exactly what Tic Tic Boom! has been for the last five years. The two founding members live together above their home studio in Los Angeles. They pride themselves in independently handcrafting everything from start to finish—from their home recordings to screen-printed merch and DIY music videos. In April 2012, the duo will release their third EP Before the Sun Rises, which promises to be stronger, dreamier, darker, and a major evolution of their sound.

DeLay moved to Los Angeles from Seattle in 2001 with his previous band, but not long after, things started to unravel. In the meantime, Mike had befriended fellow bartender Francisco and who introduced him to some songs she had written. Their relationship—-musical and romantic—-blossomed from there. They moved into Mike’s back-alley rehearsal studio and holed up for a year just writing and practicing. The band released their first punk-influenced EP How to Defuse a Bomb in 2008.

After DeLay earned his certification as a pro-tools engineer from the Musicians Institute, the two began writing and recording their second EP, drawing inspiration from new wave, punk, and indie rock. Released in January 2011, Reasons & Rhymes received a wealth of praise and recognition from publications like Sonicbids, Buzzbands LA, and The Owl Mag. CMJ.com described their music as “hook-laced synthpop that casts live drums and guitars as conspicuously as it does sugary vocals and catchy synth loops.” It also earned the band the opportunity to do an official remix of one of the most popular songs of 2011, Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks,” and an invitation to showcase at CMJ Music Marathon in New York.

After a year of tirelessly playing shows and releasing acoustic versions and remixes, Tic Tic Boom! is nearly ready to release their third EP, Before the Sun Rises. It was dubbed thus by the two’s nearly nocturnal writing and recording schedule and, as with each of their previous releases, the upcoming EP showcases a different side of Tic Tic Boom! “[Before the Sun Rises] deals with concepts of life and death,” explains Francisco about the inspiration behind the EP. “How all things are cyclical and we're all just a small piece of an enormous never-ending puzzle. It's about struggling to understand your place in all of that.”

To support their live performance, DeLay and Francisco are joined by Trevor Hunnicutt on drums and Matt Gurgol on bass. Live, Tic Tic Boom! commands the crowd to dance with floor-shaking bass synths, sweeping and sometimes jittery arpeggios, disco-drum beats, and distorted guitars, all under Francisco’s dreamlike vocals. “You can almost smell the perfume and sweat from the dancefloor in the electro-pop of LA quartet Tic Tic Boom,” depicts Kevin Bronson of Buzzbands.la.

Tic Tic Boom!'s music has been heard on MTV and Showtime and can be found on Amazon and itunes.