Roosevelt: "Sea" (via SoundCloud)

For about six years now, London-via-Berlin label Greco-Roman has constantly exhibited an ear for colorful, beat-driven music with sticky-sweet hooks—the involvement of Hot Chip's Joe Goddard has certainly helped—chalking up early releases from beyond-blog breakouts like Disclosure and Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs along the way.

In 2013, the label's well of worthwhile artists has proven especially bottomless, and Marius Lauber, the mastermind behind German dance-pop project Roosevelt, is next in line. Merging dance music's hypnotic psychedelia with pop's streamlined songwriting, the four tracks featured on his recent Elliot EP showcase a big-room sense of introspection rounded out by Lauber's own sweetly melancholic vocals.

While press notes suggest Elliot's winsome title track is about a specific girl in Lauber's life, the singer lets out a laugh of minor frustration when I bring this up over the phone. "It's not like I was trying to tell a story," he says, "I just liked saying her name." Roosevelt's music hews closely to indie-pop's sensitivity, but he's not a lyrics guy in the traditional sense; another EP cut, forthcoming single "Montreal", carries a similarly simple connection with its namesake. "It's probably really nice there," says Lauber, who's only visited the storied Canadian metropolis in his mind. "That's the reason why I make music—to escape."

The 23-year-old lived in the German city of Viersen, a suburb of Cologne, for much of his young life; after trudging through piano lessons as a pre-teen, he picked up the drums when he was 16 and eventually found a small amount of success behind the kit for the rock-oriented band Beat! Beat! Beat!. 

Lauber moved to Cologne proper when he was 18 and discovered the pleasures of dance music while sharing a studio space with Kompakt-signed techno-pop duo Coma. "At first, I thought, 'It all sounds like the same song,' like what your mother would say," he laughs, talking about his early experiences listening to dance music. "But it has a hypnotic effect, and there's a sense of storytelling that you'd never get from seeing someone play guitar music." About a year and a half ago, he moved to Berlin to focus more on his music as Roosevelt, which he writes and records on his own. "I don't really feel home there," he states matter-of-factly about his new locale. "It's just too big. If you're from a city like Cologne, you can feel really lost in Berlin."

Roosevelt: "Around You" (via SoundCloud)

Demure but conversational, Lauber is a quiet speaker who doesn't make it out to the clubs that often, despite Berlin's notorious nightlife scene. "I'm not really into most of the open air raves—they feel like a techno amusement park," he says. "It's not very inspiring." While saying this, he's struck by a noble sense of self-awareness—a trait that can cut through Roosevelt's bright, bold dance-pop constructions as well. "I wish I wasn't so picky about the stuff the DJ plays. I'm always the guy who complains, and my friends say, 'Hey, just relax.'"

And besides, Lauber has better reasons for not tripping the rave fantastic on a regular basis: He's hard at work on Roosevelt's debut LP, which he's aiming to release some time next year. 

Pitchfork: When some of the Roosevelt material started getting passed around, there was very little information about you to go along with it. 

Marius Lauber: A lot of bands put most of their energy into promoting themselves, but I needed this project to be focused on the music. On this tour, people have asked me, "Why don't you sell shirts or stickers?" But I was never really that much into the whole self-promotion thing. I just want people to hear my music and like it. I want to avoid annoying them enough so I can make them listen.

Pitchfork: Berlin has always been known as an artistic enclave, do you feel like you're a member of that community there?

ML: There’s no network. You don’t really bump into people very often. The musical scenes there are separate from each other. In Cologne, I shared a studio space with Coma and a rock band; in Berlin, it’s much more separated. I’m sure if you are up to meeting people, it can be amazing, but in Cologne, you just bump into people because it’s so small, which I like.

Roosevelt: "Soleil" (via SoundCloud)

Pitchfork: Your sound straddles the line between dance and pop, something a lot of artists attempt to do but don't always succeed at.

ML: It's really amazing to not be isolated in one scene. When I started this project, the only limitation I wanted to set was was that it would be dance music, but I would never have thought that I'd exist in both worlds. I like playing clubs because the only feedback you get is when you make people dance. Sometimes, I play a more traditional concert, and they just stand there and applaud at the end. I'm like, "Did they like it?"