Madrid trio Ten Bears bare their electropop teeth on "Falling"

The band formed when Venezuelan musician and designer Johan Escalona started writing with Chipi López, his girlfriend's sister. A well-travelled soul, Escalona lived in the USA and London before settling in Madrid. Hearing David Bowie's Young Americans at the age of 19 was the point where he decided to form his first band. 18 months ago, he began to put the ideas together that would eventually bear fruit under the Ten Bears name.

López - who tells us she's "a young fiery girl who believes pretty much in everything" is Madrid-born and lives downtown in the city where she studies journalism and contemporary dance.

Escalona makes the music and melodies for Ten Bears but it's López and her vocal foil Lucia Ranz who are the band's front. Ranz only joined recently because, as Escalona explains, "we needed a powerful extra voice to make the songs stronger and rounded - Lucia [gives] the songs an extra magic touch." A Performing Arts student, Ranz was raised on a musical diet of Aretha Franklin, Amy Winehouse and Etta James and used to be in a folk band called Spring Leaves.

The mellow deep beats of "Falling" are the dominant backdrop to a song depicting a frosty relationship and was recorded and produced at home, explains Escalona, "except the vocals that were recorded while rehearsing." It's one of three impressive tracks on the band's SoundCloud.

They've only just started playing live and have a show coming up alongside Miqui Brightside at Madrid's Costello Club on 25 May. They're passionate about the Madrid music scene.:"[It's] small but very dynamic scene with quite a lot of gigs and new band coming up," Lopez tells us.

"Nowadays the world is very global," adds Escalona, "with the new technologies we’ve got friends in London, Mexico, New York, Buenos Aires or Melbourne listening to the same music we are listening."