They. weave together rap, R&B, hip-hop on debut

When Drew Love puts his mind to something, telling him "no" only fuels his flames.

The singer- songwriter chose his craft, seemingly, as a means of resisting his rigidly structured military upbringing. As with many children of the armed forces, he has lived in several places — he was born in San Antonio and moved to El Paso before arriving in the suburbs of Montgomery County, Md., in seventh grade.

There, throughout his years at Wootton High School, his passion for music and his black-sheep status in his family became more defined.

His parents "wanted me to focus on other things, and there were things that I sacrificed because I wanted to go record. I would be late for work or miss an interview. The bane of their existence was me wanting to be a musician so bad," he says with a laugh over the phone.

His bullheadedness paid off. The 24-year-old is in Los Angeles, where the pursuit of his dreams landed him in 2014. His musical partner, Dante Jones, is on the phone with him; together, the duo is known as They. Their recently released debut, "Nü Religion: Hyena," is a genre-bending accomplishment that welds R&B and hip-hop with pop and rock elements.

The two met after moving to the City of Angels separately. (Jones, 28, hails from Denver.) He playfully jabs at Love as he recalls having to meet him three times before Love even remembered him. But once their friendship was cemented, the potential for partnership revealed itself quickly.

"After a while, we started working together, and I showed him some of my more left-field ideas I'd been working on that I hadn't shown to anybody," Jones says. "Next thing we knew, we had four or five songs."

Their chemistry is unmistakable even over the phone.

"Dante and I have always been like a yin and yang. We're both goofballs and always joking around," Love says. "But there's also certain things — like, he likes more emo, and I like more punk and pop rock, like the Blink 182s and Sum 41s. He's more Taking Back Sunday."

Jones adds: "Even on a personal level, he's more open to meeting people. I'll be the last person in a room to talk to someone. If Drew had a role, on a social level, he's more like the diplomat or ambassador of They."