For him the word "lo" relates to the feminine energy, usually found in the string compositions that he incorporates into his songs. "Fang," meanwhile, represents the more masculine, industrialized beats he tends to use. Hemerlein aims to strike a counterbalance between the two, so much so that "lo" and "fang" have become helpful keywords in the recording studio with him requesting "more fang" or "more lo." "The meeting points of really disparate sounds is interesting to me," he explains.

With his debut, Blue Film (out Feb. 25), the former music teacher from Baltimore manages to find a happy medium between the two competing styles.

On the album's sexy title-track, he uses warped synths to play off the naughty meaning behind the phrase "blue film," a euphemism for pornography in India. The classically trained violinist sweetly plucks away, counteracting some of the song's creepiness and making the track seem more heartfelt than lecherous.

With his slinky cover of "You're the One That I Want" from Grease, Hemerlein drops down to a F-sharp major to put a seedy spin on Danny and Sandy's love song. His updated version was inspired by a rather feminist take on the movie.

"There's a lot of really strange subtlety misogynistic attitudes in that movie to begin with," Hemerlein explains. "There's a darkness kind of underneath it, even the whole teen pregnancy aspect and like 'Beauty School Dropout,' it's not really supportive. It's like being like, 'You're just going to fail at this.'"

Hemerlein's latest single, "Look Away," takes a lighter approach with a bit of downhome banjo, a nod to his time in Nashville. Lines like, "The things we used to joke about have all come true/I had to slowly back away," were written on his trek from Nashville to L.A., the same road trip in which he came up with the name Lo-Fang.

The making of his debut spanned three continents and five cities, leading many to explore this idea of pilgrimage during the making of the album. But the singer says it was less about him looking to find himself and more about being in the right place at the right time - his friend who is a director of photography for National Geographic and the Travel Channel was looking to get rid of a few extra frequent flier miles.