For Roses & Revolutions it all started to come together when Alyssa Coco and Matt Merritt decided to stop writing for other people.

“It’s funny, Roses & Revolutions started in 2014 as a singer-songwriter duo,” Coco said. “We were writing mostly for the purpose of things; MTV, movies; that sort of stuff. Then in 2016 we kind of stopped doing that and just wrote something that we really felt good about. That’s when ‘The Pines’ came out.”

The song got noticed by a Spotify, which gave it enough exposure to reach No. 2 on its viral chart. That chart tracks not only how many times a song was played but how often it was mentioned on social media.

“That’s when we say Roses & Revolutions formed. That’s the sound that created us,” Coco said.

But back in 2014, when they technically—if not formally—came together in Rochester, New York, it was out of a totally different project. Merritt and Coco were part of a jam band when they split off to do their own thing.

Rochester, also the home to the likes of Joywave, was a great place to get established, Coco said.

“Rochester supports live music like crazy; the arts in general,” she said. “We have Eastman School of Music here. Some phenomenal artists have come out of Rochester. We have a really tight-knit community and we’ve pretty much all worked together.”

Now they’re following up their breakthrough single with a self-titled debut EP, a mix of some songs written around the same time as “The Pines” and others written just earlier this year. It spans indie pop to alt-rock.

“When people ask us our genre it’s hard to pinpoint exactly where we’re at,” Coco said. “There’s some different stuff going on. It’s not like when you listen to an album and it’s 12 songs that all sound the same.”

Merritt is the duo’s primary songwriter, and then brings the demos early versions to Coco to jointly work on the melodies and the chord progressions. That means the songs are more personal to him, while Coco is left to form her own opinions. Of course that occasionally causes some misunderstandings.

“Sometimes I’ll be on stage and say, ‘So this next song is about…’ and after the show Matt says, ‘That is definitely not what the song is about, but cool.'”

Roses & Revolutions plan to play some shows later this summer, start a full tour in the fall and are already writing the songs that will make up the next EP. Much of the new material was inspired by a recently concluded stretch on the road, which included a show at the Great American Music Hall.

But for now, their first EP comes out on Aug. 3.

“It’ll take you out of your world for a minute,” Coco said.

Follow editor Daniel J. Willis at Twitter.com/BayAreaData.