Guillaume, 35, grew up in Dijon, in Burgundy, and Jonathan, 29, in Normandy, the Ivory Coast and Peru. Their fathers are brothers, but they were not especially close until about seven years ago, when Jonathan was in film school, and Guillaume was making dub music as Mayd Hubb, inspired by Lee Perry, King Tubby and Mad Professor.

Jonathan needed to create a music video for film school, and asked Guillaume for a remixed version of one of his tracks. They found they had similar impulses, and soon began collaborating formally as the Blaze. (They now live together in Paris with their girlfriends.)

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Their music is architecturally sturdy, borrowing from electro and house, and also florid and misty, taking in some of dub music’s abstractions. “We try to have not too much clean,” Guillaume said.

From the beginning, they gave equal weight to music and imagery. “We were a little bit annoyed to see that every music video is the same, a guy or a girl singing with big cars,” Jonathan said. “We wanted to tell a story, to do something more original.”

Added Guillaume, “And speak about people we don’t used to see.”

First came “Virile,” made for about $100. “What can we do with 100 bucks?” Jonathan remembered thinking. They bought beers, and filmed two friends in an apartment overlooking Brussels. In the video, the men smoke, dance, sing — their interaction is part filial, part aggressive, part crypto-romantic. The conceit is simple, but the effect is overpowering. Shot with stark, nonjudgmental calm, the video has a patient affection that recalls nothing so much as “Planet Earth.” (The Blaze cite as visual inspirations the filmmakers Ken Loach and the Dardenne Brothers, and the photographer Sebastião Salgado.) It’s piercingly intimate, and utterly casual, everyday interactions rendered as dramatic theater.

Jonathan sent the video to Manu Barron, one of the founders of the French dance music label Bromance Records, who was struck by the unusual isolation of their vision. “All these young Parisians, young Londoners, who know everything about everything — the good shoes to have, how to have friends — these two guys were completely out of the game,” Mr. Barron said, calling in from his Ibiza vacation.