The Dove & the Wolf

The Philly-via-Paris duo's new EP grapples with the emotional fallout of the Paris Bataclan attacks and is now streaming exclusively on Noisey.

Paloma Gil and Lou Hayat know exactly where they were on November 13, 2015. It’s hard to forget. What they thought would be an ordinary night out at a friend’s bar—not far from Parisian concert venue Bataclan—turned into an evening that would transform their lives, personally and professionally, for months to come.

The duo, who comprise the now-Philadelphia-based band of The Dove and The Wolf, needed to renew their visa and returned home to Paris after spending the better part of a year in the US touring. It was a long and arduous process involving lawyers, petitioners, letters of recommendation. By November, they’d spent two months in France and were eager to get back to Philly to write. Then, an act of terror on an concert hall.

“We knew that even if we got the visa [that day], we couldn’t leave,” Gil recalls. “We needed to be there.”

Seven months later, Gil and Hayat are back in Philly. They secured their visa, which doesn’t have to be renewed for three years, in January, and they’re about to release an EP, I Don’t Know What To Feel, on June 17, a collection of five songs directly inspired by the night of November 13. Warm and intimate, Hayat’s soprano balancing Gil’s alto, their voices weave together in unexpected harmonies. Songs like the title track transition from celestial ambience to heavenly cooing, an instrumental closing number that shows there’s just as much power in sounds as there is in words. “The Smell of Us” plays on the power of human connection in the face of tragedy: “It will never be the same / I already know / But I want you with me now / How can I let you go and still keep you close?” they sing in unison.

Groups of young people stroll casually past the Fishtown bar Johnny Brenda’s, where the duo now sit pondering carefully over their beer selection. A light breeze blows their long hair as they crouch over Hayat’s phone screen which displays a photo of the bar’s drink board.

“I can only take selfies, only my front camera works,” Gil says flatly, looking up from the phone. They’re both tired after a late night in Atlantic City shooting a music video for “The Smell of Us.”

A trio on the street corner behind the table where we sit hug farewell: a very American display of affection, something you’d never see in France, they say.

“We don’t do that,” Gil says, shaking her head.

“For the few days, weeks that followed [the attacks], you’d see people hugging on the street,” Hayat continues.

“It felt like people were warmer. It was beautiful.”

The EP was born out of a time of fear, however the result is a tender showing of strength. The songs are not political—the duo purposely shunned such an idea—but touch on the humanizing effect of a dehumanizing event, how the human condition brings people together in the face of tragedy. “Hello stranger, I do not know anything about you / But I know you must feel just as empty as I do” opens “Seven Days,” a sobering track on the aftermath of an instant that affects the masses.


In the weeks following the attacks, Gil and Hayat couldn’t listen to music, read books, watch a movie. Everyone in their inner circle had, in some way, been affected by the events of November 13. Sufjan Stevens’s Carrie & Lowell helped Hayat reflect and recover. Soon after, they took to the French countryside to write the EP in a matter of days. Upon returning to Philly, they connected with Dave Hartley (The War on Drugs, Nightlands) and Nick Krill (The Spinto Band, Teen Men), who produced I Don’t Know What To Feel, to record in March of this year. Wasting no time at all, they concluded mixing and mastering and got the work ready for release.

“Some people were like ‘No, when you release something you take three to four months. Don’t release it now, now’s not a good time,’” Hayat remembers. “And we were like, we don’t care. It’s because of its meaning, it can’t wait any longer.”

Despite their 13-year friendship—half of their lives at this point—and having played music together for much of that (although they only started writing as a team since 2012), Hayat feels this is only just the beginning for The Dove and The Wolf. Her childhood was spent playing with her brothers in banana fields on the Caribbean island of Martinique while Gil, a city kid, would save her spare cash from Christmas and birthdays to buy tickets to concerts in Paris. Even with an ocean between them, the two managed to form a friendship. Gil’s mother had met Hayat at a party and thought the teen reminded her of her own teenage daughter. She got Hayat’s internet info and encouraged the girls to chat online. They became fast friends and met two months later while Hayat was in Paris visiting her father. Hayat eventually moved to Paris when she was 16, but their distinct upbringings allowed each member of the band to think and react in different ways, musically and personally. Gil speaks swiftly and often. She laughs loudly and buoyantly. Hayat is more reserved, thoughtful in her sentiments. They both love singing Boyz II Men at karaoke.

There are many light moments throughout the conversation as the pair detail stories like Gil’s selfie tour of the Jersey Shore, but the Paris terror attacks are never far from their minds. It puts all of this in perspective: They know not to take any moment for granted. Although unpacking it all to those who didn’t live it is taking some getting used to.

“It’s weird because you have to talk about something that you did because you felt stuff,” Hayat says. “It’s like forced therapy in a way.”

“I think when we decided to write a song about it, we just needed to,” Gil says. “We asked ourselves the question: What are we going to talk about? We thought about the thing that really touched us was how people were after and how people were together and that’s what we wanted to write about because that’s a beautiful thing.”

“It’s kind of amazing how such a serious, terrible, terrifying event can rehumanize things when it’s so unhuman,” Hayat says later. “It’s this thing that reminds you that the little things, the innocence, the lighter aspect of life is so important.” - Noisey

Philadelphia-based, French best friends Paloma Gil and Lou Hayat were in the midst of putting together their first full-length as The Dove & The Wolf when they made the trip to Paris in late 2015 to renew their U.S. work visas. Then, the November terrorist attacks hit, and a visit that should’ve taken one month ended up lasting five. The aftermath of that experience led to I Don’t Know What to Feel, a five-track offering that speaks volumes of heartbreak, loss, and, at some points, hope. Now, the duo is back with the video for standout track “The Smell of Us,” and we’re premiering it right here.

In the visual, a white-wigged protagonist aimlessly wanders through Atlantic City, New Jersey, echoing the song’s theme of wanting to give yourself entirely to a person (or even a place), but not knowing how much time you have left together. “How can I let you go, and still keep you close?” the duo asks.

The pair self-released I Don’t Know What to Feel in June, deciding after the events in Paris that “it needs to be now.” Listening to “The Smell of Us” and watching its wistful video, we can understand why.

Watch the entire visual below, and read on for the friends’ thoughts on crafting the album, shooting the zero-budget video for “The Smell of Us,” and making the journey back to the U.S.

-You each grew up on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. How did you meet and come together as a band?
We met online in 2004, pre-MySpace. We played together the first day we met in real life, but it took us eight years to finally write a song together and start this band.

-How old are you both?
We’re 52 [together]. Do the math.

-Where was the video shot and how long did shooting take? What was it like seeing everything come together for the song?
We shot the whole thing over two days. We started at Ortlieb’s in Philadelphia, a bar where we play a lot, and the rest was shot in Wildwood, Atlantic City, and Ocean City in New Jersey. We shot a big part of the video in a shitty motel room in Wildwood, and that was our only real expense. That town is amazing for people watching. The only people in the motel that day were our crew, a couple in their late eighties, and this woman on an inflatable pink flamingo who never left the pool the entire time we were there. We could have made the video about her, or anyone in Wildwood for that matter. The most amazing moment of the shoot was going to Ocean City at sunrise and seeing dolphins. They were super close to the shore, right where the waves were breaking, and I think we can kind of see them in the last shot of the video.

-In the video, you never truly see the main character’s face. Is there a reason for that?
That was Dave [Jannetta’s] idea and the whole concept was his, but it maybe has something to do with the fact that it’s not about the character and who they are, but more about their feeling of nostalgia in relation to their senses.

-Why did you settle on the sense of smell to describe the relationship in the song?
When we wrote the song, we didn’t think about it, and we just wrote what felt right.

-How did being in Paris during the November attacks influence your writing on I Don’t Know What to Feel?
It’s still hard to wrap our heads around what’s going on in Paris and in the world. Ask us again in 20 years. But we will say that what happened changed our way of seeing things, and these songs are definitely a result of our time in Paris.

-You made it back to the U.S., but unfortunately, attacks continue to mount here as well. How do you feel being back?
We don’t really feel safe anywhere, but we won’t stop writing and performing. That’s what matters to us the most.

-What do you like to do together when you’re not writing and recording music?
We like to play shows and perform our songs for an audience... or just karaoke.

-Where do you see the band going from here?
Everywhere, hopefully. - Nylon

When Paloma Gil and Lou Hayat — who make up the Philadelphia-based duo The Dove And The Wolf — went back home to France last fall in the midst of working on their debut album, they expected to only be there for a couple months while waiting on new work visas. But it ended up taking five months, during which time the Paris terrorists attacks occurred, before they were able to return stateside. That tense, listless period resulted in I Don’t Know What To Feel, a collection of songs that were written in the countryside over a period of three days right before leaving. The EP was recorded back in the US, and produced by Dave Hartley (The War On Drugs, Nightlands) and Nick Krill (The Spinto Band, Teen Men). “The Smell Of Us,” the lead single from the EP, captures the aimlessness of never really knowing how long you have left, whether it’s in a country waiting on a visa, in a relationship, or in life as a whole, a reality made all the more clear by the Paris attacks. “How can I let you go and still keep you close?” they sing. “I want you with me now.” Listen and read some words about the song from the band below.

‘The Smell of Us’ is about spending a night with someone, and knowing your relationship with that person will never be the same after it because all you have for certain is that moment, but wanting to give yourself to them as if your time together wasn’t so fragile. We wrote it after spending 5 months in Paris knowing that we could be moving back to the US any day, the moment we got the news our visas were accepted. And during this big gap of waiting, we met people, we felt things that didn’t want to be contained within such a finite box of time, and it might sound cheesy but we realized that we didn’t want to waste our time not following what we love—we have to just love each other, even if that’s going to be it. This song is about knowing that you can’t expect more from this person [you’re starting to fall for / or / you wish you could hold on to] because you can’t promise more than that night, but wanting to risk giving yourself to that night anyway, because feeling it is worth it.

It’s really about that duality. The duality of reality and fantasy? Of wanting to make the most of a moment, but also feeling strange nostalgia for a future within it that you’re not sure will have the chance to unfold. The sense of smell is very closely linked with memory and emotion, probably more so than any of our other senses. The smell of two bodies together—to us, it feels like nostalgia distilled to its original form. - Stereogum

Paloma Gil and Louise Hayat-Camard have been playing music together since they were teenagers in Paris, and in a more formal sense as The Dove and The Wolf since 2012. But the duo came on our collective radars in a big way over the past year.

First there was word that these great singers and songwriters, both 26, had relocated to Philadelphia last autumn. Then there was their exquisite Shaking Through session in December, followed up by a meditative set for Folkadelphia back in March.

Their songwriting is reflective and dynamic, wandering serpentine paths of joy and melancholy with interlocking guitar lines, brilliant vocal harmonies and vivid lyrics. “The further you dig into yourself, the further you see into the battle,” they sing on “Going East.” “He has got a heart so big, it must be a hard heart to handle.”

This nuanced combination of sound and vision makes The Dove and The Wolf very much simpatico with Philadelphia’s Dave Hartley, who produced their stellar 2016 EP I Don’t Know How to Feel along with Nick Krill of Teen Men and The Spinto Band. It’s not so much that Hartley gave The War on Drugs treatment to these two songwriters; the vibe was already there, and lent itself remarkably well to his aesthetic.

Though it often performs as a duo, The Dove and The Wolf has evolved into a full scale band lately, with Craig Hendrix (Auctioneer, Japanese Breakfast) joining Paloma and Lou on drums and Andy Black (Laser Background) playing bass. The group’s sound launches the songs into a stratospheric dreamscape full of color and light.

For their recent Key Studio Session, we got a bonus treat: Meg Duffy, guitarist for Kevin Morby’s band (as well as her own experimental project Hand Habits) sat in on three of the performances, channeling some serious Jerry Garcia licks into the arrangements — making this session ever apt as we come to the end of The Days Between. In that spirit, if I had to add an artist to last year’s list of 20 contemporary artists every Deadhead should be listening to, it would be The Dove and The Wolf, hands down.

The band is on the road currently, and just wrapped a performance at Appleton, WI’s Mile of Music festival. They return to Philadelphia to headline MilkBoy on Wednesday, August 24th; tickets and more information on the show can be found at the XPN Concert Calendar. Below, watch The Dove and The Wolf perform “Seven Days” via VuHaus, listen to their Key Studio Session in full and download the performance here, via Soundcloud. - WXPN

Duality is something that seems innately tied to The Dove & The Wolf. It’s in their name, it’s reflected in their sense of home (songwriters Paloma and Lou are French citizens who are now based in Philadelphia) and it courses through the themes of their songs. We hear some of that duality on “The Smell of Us,” a song taken from the duo’s forthcoming I Don’t Know How to Feel EP.

Produced by familiar faces Dave Hartley and Nick Krill, “The Smell of Us” has a breezy, tropical sound that floats the harmonies of Paloma and Lou as they explore contradicting feelings of wanting things to stay the same while knowing they have to change.

The track was premiered on Stereogum, where the band explained the circumstances of the lyrics:

‘The Smell of Us’ is about spending a night with someone, and knowing your relationship with that person will never be the same after it because all you have for certain is that moment, but wanting to give yourself to them as if your time together wasn’t so fragile. We wrote it after spending 5 months in Paris knowing that we could be moving back to the US any day, the moment we got the news our visas were accepted. And during this big gap of waiting, we met people, we felt things that didn’t want to be contained within such a finite box of time, and it might sound cheesy but we realized that we didn’t want to waste our time not following what we love—we have to just love each other, even if that’s going to be it. This song is about knowing that you can’t expect more from this person [you’re starting to fall for / or / you wish you could hold on to] because you can’t promise more than that night, but wanting to risk giving yourself to that night anyway, because feeling it is worth it. - WXPN

“Green & Yellow” is the latest song created through Weathervane Music’s Shaking Through series, written and performed by Paris born group The Dove & The Wolf over a weekend in Fishtown’s Miner Street Recordings studio.


The ambient pop duo of Paloma Gil and Louise Hayat started making music together when they lived in Paris, but a U.S. tour inspired them to move to Philadelphia, where they are now based.

The shimmering imagery and instrumentation that propels “Green & Yellow” forward were sparked by a relationship of Lou’s where her partner had trouble accepting that she had a past with other people. About the meaning of the song, Lou explains:

“In my head I was like, ‘it’s not fair because I’m not there, I’m here.’ It was in the winter and I got this image of driving along summer fields. It made sense because when you’re driving you can’t really go forward without looking behind. That’s what the song was about. It’s fine to have something behind you if you keep looking forward.”
Paloma and Lou were backed by a crew of omnipresent local musicians for this session: Charlie Hall on drums (The War on Drugs), Owen Biddle on bass (The Roots, Rachael Yamagata) and Jesse Hale Moore on keys (Nightlands, Auctioneer). The result is a glowing song that sprawls out and away, only to be centered again by the vocalists perfectly matched harmonies.

Stream and download “Green & Yellow” here, and watch a pair of behind-the-scenes videos of the making of the song below. The full episode can be viewed here.

If you want to dig deeper into this and other Shaking Through songs, consider becoming a Weathervane Member: You’ll get exclusive access to the raw audio files of every recording session and the ability to remix each song. More information can be found here. - WXPN

This Shaking Through episode brings together the beautifully entwined voices of Parisian duo, Louise Hayat and Paloma Gil, with members of The War on Drugs, Rachael Yamagata’s band and more to explore the fruits of a classic Weathervane collaboration. The song, “Green and Yellow” is extraordinary, once again.
Long before this day ever happened, we asked Weathervane members around the world to suggest great possible artists for Shaking Through. Our long-time friend Laurence in Paris suggested The Dove & The Wolf - then a folk duo, lighting up YouTube with impromptu video performances, and tracks from a debut 7 inch. The music they were making was so beautiful, and we all knew there was a story there that we’d never told before.
“I was born in Paris,” says Paloma. “I grew up there. I spent my whole life in the same building. It was where my dad spent his whole life and where my grandmother spent her whole life.”
“And I grew up in the middle of nowhere in Martinique, in a house in the middle of banana fields...I feel so lucky that I got to do that.” adds Lou.
The two met in Paris 11 years ago, before they moved to Philadelphia in 2015…. Which brings us to a particularly sun-drenched day in July where they were to record “Green and Yellow” with drummer Charlie Hall of The War on Drugs, Owen Biddle who has played with The Roots and Rachael Yamagata, and new Philly singer-songwriter Jesse Hale Moore on keys. The impromptu group was chasing a production idea that producer (and Weathervane Founder) Brian McTear had years before.
“For my whole life,” says McTear, “I’ve wanted to produce a song in the vein of U2’s “Elvis Presley and America” from Unforgettable Fire. The drum beat was something I’ve never heard anyone emulate, and Lou and Paloma’s song seemed the perfect opportunity to try. When I asked Charlie, he simply texted a picture of his bedroom as a kid. The black drum kit and huge U2 poster seemed to suggest he was game.”
“Green and Yellow” came together incredibly fast that day. The drums, bass and Rhodes - all live - seemed meant to be in an instant. Lou and Paloma’s scratch vocals and guitar could have even made the final cut, which practically never happens. And when the two sang together as a pair for their final vocal, there seemed little reason to interfere.
Says Lou, “I think we had the best band we could have had...we’re super lucky and I’m so grateful for all the people that we’ve met along the road who have given us a chance...we’re doing what we love the most everyday which is...a blessing, there are no other words.” - Weathervane Music - Shaking Through

When Paloma Gil and Lou Hayat erupt into a harmonized rendition of Robbie Williams’ “Angels,” it actually sounds good. Not a cheesy-because-it’s-karaoke-good, but real-deal-putting-their-own-spin-on-it good. It’s effortless. It’s almost unfair. They should be barred from karaoke.

Robbie Williams was popular in Paris in the late ‘90s, Gil says, opposed to the relative irrelevance in the States. Seemingly so as both she, who grew up in Paris, and Hayat, who eventually moved there from Martinique, were more than acquainted with the track, Hayat’s vocals weaving soft and intricate harmonies above Gil’s alto bellow. They lounge in the chill din of the karaoke screen in front of them, the orange walls of the private room we’ve rented at Yakitori Boy, a local karaoke bar, adding a warmth to the power ballad.

Together, Gil and Hayat comprise The Dove and the Wolf, the Philly via Paris duo who sing their own songs with the same affection. Their innate ability to pick up on the other’s vocal cues, to seamlessly craft harmonies, to have a back-and-forth flow is not something that can be taught or learned. In fact, it always was.

With an ocean between them, Gil and Hayat began their relationship online. (It was Gil’s mother who met Hayat at a party and introduced the then-teen girls electronically.) A few months later, Hayat was in Paris visiting her father - she also met her web friend IRL.

“We played together that day,” Gil remembers. “But it took us 8 years to write together.”

“We never even thought about it,” Hayat continues.

In the interim, they each wrote their own solo music and would collaborate for fun, but it wasn’t until a friend suggested that they flesh out a full song together for a short film he was working on that The Dove and the Wolf was born. Their songwriting takes elegant lyrical turns, writing phrases that appeal to the senses, that pour over a listener like warm honey. Largely self-taught on guitar, they utilize the textures in the other’s accompaniment to weave an electric-folk tapestry where Hayat will maintain a steady strum and Gil will fill in with high guitar voicings.

Gil takes her bandana and ties it around her head. A bandana thoughtfully tied around her neck has become her calling card, as is the fact that her phone camera only takes selfies. She turns her back to the karaoke screen and hoists the phone and catches her reflection: a red bandana clad head in front of a paused screen of R. Kelly donning the same attire. She’s well versed in R. Kelly and has even recorded an album of R. Kelly covers, though she’s slightly unfamiliar with “When A Woman’s Fed Up,” which she currently sings.

Hayat goes for a bubblegum pop selection Britney Spears’ “Oops!... I Did It Again.” Her rendition is sweet and she frequently cracks a crooked smile every time she stumbles over a phrase. The song embodies a part of music’s history that was marked by in-your-face exuberance, though Hayat manages to make it delicate, even creating harmonies on-the-spot over the backing track.

As for their own music, they stray from both R&B and glossy pop with earthy folk, their vocal pairings able to fill large rooms. On recent EP I Don’t Know What To Feel, written out of the intense emotional aftermath following the attacks on Bataclan in Paris, they work with producers Dave Hartley of The War on Drugs and Nick Krill of The Spinto Band who create anthemic poignancy to the powerful songs.


“I cannot stop thinking about it / and I don’t know what to feel” they sing on “Seven Days,” swirling guitar compositions thundering underneath, a mid-range riff based off of the song’s melody and a minimalistic piercing guitar line charging the vocals above it.

Yakitori Boy does not have any Boyz II Men loaded into their karaoke machines. Gil and Hayat are appalled. The R&B group are their go-to karaoke act. Yakitori Boy does have the Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men collaborative track, “One Sweet Day” though. Again, their performance is stunning and with conviction, like they’ve practiced it at home. The natural chemistry between the two cannot be trained or rehearsed, but in karaoke it still manifests.

“We balance each other a lot,” Gil says. “Even in life and in friendship, that’s why it's so easy to work and live together, but definitely work together because we bring different things.”

Story by Allie Volpe - Out Of Town Films

Philly-based Parisians Paloma Gill and Lou Hayat-Camard just got back to Philly after a couple weeks performing and writing in the midwest – and the handful of new songs they premiered at MilkBoy the other night have us excited for The Dove and The Wolf‘s net project, whenever and however it may make its way into the world. In the meantime, the duo caught up with the folks over at Out of Town Films for three performance videos: “The Smell of Us” comes from their current EP I Don’t Know What To Feel, as does “Seven Days,” a moving mediation on being caught in their hometown after the November attacks at Batalcan. They also do “On The Other Side,” which dates back to their self-titled debut EP from 2012.

The band also went to Yakitori Boy to sing karaoke with the Out of Town Films fam; read Allie Volpe’s account of the evening, which includes Robbie Williams and R. Kelly jams, and see photos over at the OOTF website, and watch the performances below. You can also grab a download of the band’s Key Studio Session over here — and keep your eyes and ears peeled for a special, intimate performance the band is staging with the OOTF crew next month. - WXPN

Paloma Gil and Lou Hayat have been playing music together since they met as teenagers in France more than a decade ago.

“Our favorite band was Muse,” Gil told me over coffee in Fishtown earlier this month. “The first song we ever played together was a System of a Down song,” she added with a chuckle.

Gil and Hayat began writing their own songs separately around the same time. Years later, in 2012, the duo released their first EP as The Dove and the Wolf, a jumbled, approximated translation of their first names (“Paloma” means dove in Spanish, and Lou sounds close enough to “loup,” the French word for wolf).

That self-titled 2012 EP was folksy: At the center of most of the songs were fingerpicked acoustic guitars, two-part harmonies and quaint, reflective lyrics.

“We were playing acoustic a lot, we had just written those songs, and we went to the countryside to record it with our friend Pierre,” Gil said. “[We] thought it would be two guitars and two vocals pretty much,” but the result was beefier than the studio-upgraded demos they’d anticipated and seemed to provide a spark to do it again.

Two years later, in 2014, Gil and Hayat doubled down on music as a full-time endeavor and moved to the States. They toured the U.S. for the first time as openers for singer-songwriter Rachael Yamagata and shared a second EP, “ The Words You Said,” an in-flux release that has propelled their recent progress.

“After the tour, we didn’t want to go back to Paris right away, so we went to Woodstock for a bit, just to be with Rachael,” Gil said. “After that, we went to New York City because we had friends and it made sense. We spent a month in New York and were like, ‘We can’t live here. There’s no way.’ I had done it before; it was just too expensive.”

Philly became a logical settling point. They house-sat for their current producer, wrote more songs and went on tour again, this time with guitarist and producer Butch Walker.

The Dove and the Wolf’s third and latest EP, “I Don’t Know What To Feel,” is the result of a 2015 return to Paris to renew their visas.

“We were supposed to be there for just a month,” Hayat said.

They ended up staying for almost half a year.

“It was a weird time,” Gil offered. “We didn’t have time to waste in the States; once we had a visa, we needed to leave. We were living every day thinking we might leave three days later. … You can’t do that forever.”

"Once we had a visa, we needed to leave. We were living every day thinking we might leave three days later. … You can’t do that forever.” — Paloma Gil
“I Don’t Know What To Feel” is, at least in part, built from the duo’s meditative aftershock following the terrorist attacks that gripped Paris on Nov. 13, three months into their stay.

“With what happened in Paris in November, it kind of changed everything,” Hayat said. “It’s gonna [sound] stupid and cheesy, but it made you realize you have no time to waste. It was really intense and weird.”

“Seven Days” is the EP’s most direct vehicle for the hangover.

“It’s been seven days; have you noticed any change?” Hayat and Gil sing in unison to a suddenly relevant stranger. “Feels like I’m looking at my city for the first time,” they realize later before another chanted lyric gives birth to the EP’s title. They sound numb and melancholy.

With “I Don’t Know What To Feel,” The Dove and the Wolf have surrounded themselves in better and more polished production than ever before.

“When we write, it’s always two guitar parts and two vocals,” Gil said.

Producers Dave Hartley and Nick Krill fleshed the songs out alongside a cast of players providing synth, bass and drums. Hayat and Gil’s guitars have been electric since 2014, and they’ve traded in the homey acoustics for a more floating, amplified sound. On the new EP’s lead single, the Stereogum-premiered “The Smell Of Us,” the guitar parts jangle and twinkle around. As the most upbeat and danceable of the EP’s five songs, “The Smell Of Us” is a smart first single. Even when their other songs carry a similar pace, the music tends toward moodier, heady territory. Hayat and Gil have mastered their interlocked harmonies and the effect can flit between unsettling and endearing. You rarely get one voice without the other.

After writing the songs in France in January, the duo recorded the EP in March in Philly.

“We just needed to put [these songs] out because they’re about something very specific,” Hayat said. “We didn’t want to wait.”

Besides that unanticipated open-ended trip home, their current stint in Philly has been their longest stay in one place since 2014. They now seem pleasantly antsy to move around — to tour and to record — while keeping Fishtown as a base.

There’s also the issue of a full-length album they recorded last August in Los Angeles.

“At the end of that tour, Butch Walker said, ‘I want to make the record,” Hayat said. “We were staying in Malibu. We’d wake up, Butch would pick us up in his blue truck.” And then they’d work.

Hayat and Gil are anxious to frame the album as their official debut and are currently working toward a label release while they roll out the EP. Before it was recorded in Los Angeles, the album was conceived in Philly during that house-sitting session in Fishtown.

“It was this crazy snow, middle of the winter,” Gil said. “And we didn’t leave, and it was just like, ‘Let’s just write songs.’ There was no Internet at the house. We didn’t see anyone else; we just wrote.”

They’ve made a habit out of these kinds of solitary writing sessions followed by clever producer match-making.

And Gil said there’s one constant.

“The core of the song is always our two voices together.” - Philly Voice