Kevin Bronson on September 11th, 2015

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Like many memorable songwriting and vocal duos, ArtPeace come from slightly different worlds. Taura Stinson is a Grammy-nominated songwriter who works with Raphael Saddiq and has credits with the likes of Destiny’s Child, Kanye West, Steven Tyler, Andre 3000, Kelly Rowland, Paloma Faith and Jennifer Hudson. Chrissy DePauw is an independent singer-songwriter, and a familiar presence on the Santa Monica Promenade, who has sold some 30,000 copies of her self-released album. Their serendipitous meeting (more on that in a bit) has yielded the full-length album “Free Music,” out Oct. 23, and their debut single, “Hi:)” (there’s a remix on the way from A Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed) is a heavenly beast with twining vocals and a tinge of regret — about, they say, “a relationship colliding head on with bad timing.”

Adam Tillman-Young (V. Bozeman’s “Race Jones”) directs the video, which uses ultraviolet light to get beneath the surface of the song’s theme. Says Stinson: “UV light exposes ‘everything,’ and that was the first vision that I had for the video. I wanted to shine the proverbial UV light on the three cycles of a complicated relationship. First it’s beautiful, then it gets ugly, and then we have a choice to walk away or stay. The in-between is usually brutally painful, but when the end is a new beginning, there’s nothing more beautiful than rediscovering the beauty in someone else.” Adds DePauw: “We wanted the backlight body-paint to really give you that ethereal trippy vibe that would compliment the music. We didn’t want to take any short cuts with our introduction to the world, especially with our name being ArtPeace.”

Now, about that: The pair met on Craiglist over a furniture transaction. DePauw makes custom headboards; Stinson was in the market, and offered to barter a song for one. Through not familiar with Stinson’s resumé, DePauw agreed, making a handcrafted serape headboard (an art piece, if you will) and then arranging a writing session. The spark was there, and the duo soon arrived at a sound they call “folk & B” — or , as they say, “folk music that bleeds like the blues.” Their song Darian Dorsey collaborates on the single “High;” their song “Airplay” was featured in the 2014 film “Beyond the Lights;” and Saadiq himself duets on “Heaven Down Here.”

||| Watch: The video for “Hi:)”