Electro-pop duo Boy Harsher want to make their fans scream — in terror — with new film

The pandemic had a chilling effect on synth-pop duo Boy Harsher.

Like a lot of other musicians, the duo stayed creative during the lockdown and recorded a new album.

Unlike most bands, however, they also wrote and directed their debut horror film “The Runner,” which is now streaming on Shudder.

“The pandemic happened and we were very isolated and Gus started working on some music that was different from our normal go-around,” said vocalist Jae Matthews, who along with producer Augustus Muller make up the Massachusetts-based group.

“We just started putting it together and were like, ‘Wow, this sounds like a soundtrack, now imagine if it were a movie.’ It was at that point that we started writing these ideas that eventually did become the movie,” she added.

The is accompanied by “The Runner (Original Soundtrack)” album. They will perform the new songs and others from their catalog at the Belasco Theater in L.A. April 19 and 20 and at The Observatory in Santa Ana April 21.

For the L.A. shows, the band plans on screening the 40-minute film, which tells the story of a strange woman in a secluded town who seems to descend deeper and deeper into violent dark places, before the concert.

It’s not really too far-fetched for Boy Harsher, which formed in 2014, to have made a horror film since Matthews and Muller first met in film school in Savannah, Georgia, and had cinematic aspirations until music took center stage.

“We started out making sparse ambient music to short VHS films Jae was making that slowly evolved into pop songs,” Muller said.

Their career began with Matthews performing spoken word pieces to some of her short films while Muller played background music.

Once audiences started responding to the music the duo focused more on that side of their creativity and have since released a handful of albums and EPs.

But the film bug never really went away.

“We relied on shows for inspiration and COVID happened and shows disappeared so we sort of went back to the drawing board. We had this time and we always dreamt about films so this was this opportunity to put something together,” Muller said.