There is something mesmerizing and indisputable about things in life that come together by the mystery of fate. Such is the story of Los Angeles music duo BITTER:SWEET (Shana Halligan and Kiran Shahani) whose lives seemed to have over-lapped but never crossed until the perfect moment in time. How else can you explain two people who lived one block away from each other and who recorded just one wall away, but never connected until an anonymous online posting?

Ultimately, that's how it all came together, and now Shana Halligan and Kiran Shahani (co-founding member of Supreme Beings of Leisure) have delivered an intoxicating and playful debut artist album, 'The Mating Game,' being released through Quango Music Group.

As a Southern California native, Shana had just returned home from "having a beautiful experience" in Europe when she decided to answer her first-ever ad for a singer. Not only was it an ad, it was on Craig's List! The accomplished musician had grown up with music in her blood - her father is eight-time Grammy Award winning composer Dick Halligan of Blood, Sweat & Tears - and she had started her singing career at age seven by performing in films and television commercials. Later on, she performed live throughout the United States and Europe in addition to composing music for television shows and soundtracks (most recently she is featured on the Buckethead album singing a duet with Serj Tankian of System Of A Down).

"I can't believe I answered an ad," Shana says now, "but I just did it!" As fate would have it, her call was the first to be answered by music producer and dance music enthusiast Kiran, who, as a founding member of the Supreme Beings of Leisure, was largely responsible for their self-titled debut album (the one that broke the electronic/trip-hop group by selling more than 250,000 copies worldwide).

After breaking away from SBL, Kiran had been toiling away in his studio doing remixes for artists like Marilyn Manson and Angela McClusky (Télépopmusik) in addition to scoring a lot of music for film and television (most recently, he remixed Wayne Newton's "Viva Las Vegas" for the theme song of The Entertainer). Although he had plenty of work on his hands, Kiran longed to collaborate musically with someone who "had the right chemistry" to match his globally-inspired, finely tuned, and optimistic musical aesthetic. And that's why he placed an online ad.

"When we met, we agreed to just play some cool music together, while sticking completely to who we were as individuals," the two later reveal. "The energy around what we did was so natural and fluid, we just kept doing it." Now each one can't imagine working without the other. Kiran now admits, "I'd been dreaming about her for a very long time."

After collaborating, Shana and Kiran discovered that they had the same exact taste in music (even in "guilty pleasure" bands from the '70s and '80s - you know, the ones you won't admit unless you really trust someone!). They also discovered that six months prior to meeting, they had recorded just one wall away from each other in the same studio. They also shared numerous friends in common, and even stranger still, had lived one street away from each other, and still had never met ... until now.