Take a classic Motown backbeat, add some chiming guitar cribbed from The Edge, and top it with soulful, open-throated vocals that sit somewhere between Adele’s ache and the late Amy Winehouse’s devil-may-care attitude and you’ve got “The Way We Touch,” the debut single from L.A. duo WE ARE TWIN.

Comprised of multi-instrumentalist Nicolas Balachandran and singer Gabi Christine, the duo met in 2009 and wrote 15 songs during their initial session. The name WE ARE TWIN was born from the ease they found working with each other. “Our creative minds are identical,” Christine says. “It’s the most natural thing in the world.”

“Although the instrumentation is very rock ‘n’ roll with synthesizers and guitars, we try to create moments that feel like you’re listening to a symphony,” Balachandran explains. “At the same time, we won’t record a song unless we can sit down with acoustic guitars and coerce a timeless feeling from it.”

Yes, the chorus melody of “The Way We Touch” is a bit Bruno Mars’ “Just The Way You Are” — Christine even sings those very words — but Mars’ song sounds like another song before it, and that song something else before it, and so on. That is the timeless genius of pop music, ladies and gentlemen, and we are all the better for WE ARE TWIN getting it and getting it right.

Purchase WE ARE TWIN – “The Way We Touch” via iTunes, Amazon MP3.