Great bands typically have a calling card, an indelible thing that captures their essence while setting them apart from everybody else. Ferraro has three which, taken together, make the fast-rising alt-rockers unique and kind of magic.

First, they are brothers who have made music together their entire lives. Also, their family owns and operates a legendary live music venue in hometown Toronto where they have played and practiced a lot. And Ferraro is a trio which any music nerd can tell you is the most vibrant configuration in rock. Seriously, Google it.

Not surprisingly then, in the lead-up to their dazzling debut EP, Sweet Fever, guitarist Cosmo Ferraro, singer/bassist Natale “Tally” Ferraro and drummer Gianni Ferraro attracted collaborations with a diverse list of Can-rock stars keen to explore the outer limits of the trio’s sprawling pop talents.

“We never really wrote together,” confirms Gianni Ferraro. “We wrote songs independently and then brought them to the band. So, this whole idea of co-songwriting with others was completely new territory for us.”

But fertile territory indeed. Take the anthemic new single “I’ll Always Be There,” co-written by Ferraro with Mother Mother’s Ryan Guldemond and boasting a chorus so gigantic that it takes what sounds like a small army of vocalists to wrangle it.

“We were on our first western Canadian tour in February 2020 right before the pandemic hit, and we had a session scheduled with Ryan, who lives in Vancouver and has a little studio there,” Cosmo Ferraro recalls.

That tour came about in part because of the swaggering, supercharged aural explosion that is “You Look Good Like That,” co-written and produced with acclaimed musical multi-tasker Thomas “Tawgs” Salter and released last year.

“My favourite song,” Gianni Ferraro says. “It was our first single and it just checks all the boxes for me: rock but modern and guitar-driven.”

At the other end of the spectrum is “Running Away,” the EP’s oldest song, co-written around 2017 with Dragonette’s Joel Stouffer, and a sonic mind-melt perhaps best described as a winding, spaghetti western-tinted rock scorcher. The Darcys also co-wrote and produced several tracks on the EP.

“Interestingly, we went into most writing sessions with nothing,” Cosmo Ferraro offers, adding that the EP was cut piecemeal at multiple studios including Toronto’s Revolution Recording and Soleil Sound. “Things began with a conversation. ‘What are you listening to? What are you liking?’ And from that we’d come up with a chord progression or a lyrical concept of what we wanted to write about.”