Two To Tango

Though they'd only been playing together for a year, DJ Mia Moretti and electric violinist Caitlin Moe landed the hottest gig of the summer. No, not Lollapalooza or Glastonbury. The duo performed at Chelsea Clinton's wedding. "The Clintons had us come on the dancefloor and dance with them," recalls Moretti. "Normally I dread weddings and don't DJ them, but it ended up being one of the best parties I've played -- it didn't even feel like a wedding." Moe adds, "It went until like 4 a.m."

While partying all night with former presidents may now be the norm, Moretti and Moe aren't jaded just yet. Today, for instance, they're talking over speakerphone, cramped in a bathroom during a soundcheck in Boston. "It's pouring rain outside, my flight was delayed, half of the equipment got stuck somewhere -- and we still don't know where we're sleeping tonight," says Moretti.

This unlikely combo of a DJ and an electric violinist took shape back in 2009, when Moretti and Moe first crossed paths in the basement of East Village boite, Ella Lounge. "Caitlin started playing the electric violin over the DJ's tracks and I had never seen anything like that. It sounded so beautiful," says Moretti. A few months later, they performed together at the official Lollapalooza "Rock the Vote" after-party. "We didn't know what we were doing," says Moretti, "but it almost works a little bit the way jazz works -- we weren't really sure how it would evolve or what would happen." What happened next were loads of gigs (including Perez Hilton's "One Night in Austin" and "One Night in Toronto" extravaganzas and a spot on the alice + olivia tour) and the transformation into a bona fide musical act.

The duo is truly a sight to behold: In addition to being cute, blonde and frequently clad in designer duds (namely Moschino and The Blonds), Moretti spins energetic, eclectic mixes while Moe frenetically goes at it on the strings, always in uncompromisingly fancy footwear and often ending up on the floor in a theatrical, gymnastics pose. "Kids" by MGMT as interpreted by Moretti and Moe is a crowd favorite. "Even when we do [La Roux's] 'Bulletproof' thirty times, it's always a different experience and it never feels like we're doing the same song," says Moretti. "You're changing the set as you go and taking everything that's happening around you and adapting to that. And then we have Caitlin playing this beautiful violin over it all."

It's the built-in unpredictability -- or rarely having time to rehearse together -- they say, that allows them the freedom to explode into an electro-pop-fueled tizzy. "When you put a band together, there are certain guidelines you have," says Moe. "But we literally go into the gig and we're like, 'Alright, we're gonna do this.' It provides so much freedom."
 
Moretti, now 26, followed the fairly typical path of a struggling twenty-something in L.A. She majored in international development studies at UCLA and earned some extra cash through music video appearances, including one for a little song by her good friend Katy Perry called "I Kissed A Girl" alongside a then-unknown Ke$ha. "Katy asked us, 'Please guys, will you be in my video? It's gonna be really big, I promise.'" Perry and Moretti, who share a penchant for crass and occasionally inappropriate humor, became pals after being introduced through a mutual friend at a Daft Punk concert where a pre-famous Perry was wearing a pink wig. "Nothing's changed," laughs Moretti. "We all lived a couple blocks from each other. Her record was almost done, but we were waiting for it to come out," Moretti recalls. "We were just young girls hanging out in a fun city trying to have a fun time."
 
It was after befriending DJ AM, (who gave her her first set of turntables) and Luke McFadden, aka Cut Chemist, (who frequently took her record shopping), that Moretti started DJing. "I got my first gig at the Standard in L.A. and I'd bring all my records and just play for fun. I didn't even call myself a DJ." (Sidenote: Moretti's first job in L.A. was as a "box girl" at the Standard, for which she sat in her underwear... in a box.) But it wasn't until Moretti moved to New York that DJing became a full-time thing. "I had no money and just took every job I could get," she says. "The DJ shifts you get when you first start are awful, and you get paid like a hundred dollars." The gigs have certainly improved for Moretti, who recently appeared on the Today show with Kelis, and she makes an appearance on the deluxe edition of Katy Perry's Teenage Dream.
 
Moe followed a very different trajectory. Growing up in Gainesville, Florida, she recalls, "My mom kind of threw the violin in my hands when I was four because I was hyperactive." Violin became her life, and seven-hour practice sessions, with only a break for dinner, were the norm. But the life of a classical violinist wasn't for her. "I was 'too interpretive,' 'too emotional.' I'd 'move too much,'" says Moe, 22. "I appreciated the discipline, but I knew there was something more that I wanted to say." Moe fled to New York, where she was exposed to a slew of musical genres. "I had no idea what rock music or electro or dance music was," says Moe. "I'd be sitting at a table and someone would mention The Rolling Stones and I'd say, 'Oh, yeah!' And I'd run home and be like, 'Oh my God, I gotta Google them.'" She began "studying rock and pop music and combined it with the violin," and soon traded in the sheet music for improvised, in-the-moment artistic expression with partner-in-crime Moretti.

These days, whether they're performing for Madonna (yeah, they did that), providing the soundtrack to multiple shows during New York Fashion Week, or putting up with tacky song requests from Wall Street guys, at the end of the night, it's all the same stuff. As Moretti puts it: "You go to whatever your job is during the day, at night you go to some club. You have a couple cocktails, you own the room, you feel like a rock star and nothing can stop you."