The Accidentals named themselves for one happy accident, little suspecting that it was just the first of many.

Five years ago, Savannah Buist and Katie Larson were Traverse City high schoolers and orchestra nerds who didn’t know each other all that well until they were thrown together by happenstance.

They both volunteered to perform at an afterschool event and they went to Buist’s house to rehearse. Instead of practicing the prescribed solemnity, however, they played the White Stripes.

“It was the song, ‘We’re Going To Be Friends,’ which is hilarious,” Larson said. “It ended up being prophetic.”

Buist said she and Larson knew they were going to form a band that very day. And it came to pass in a big way.

The Accidentals perform January 28 at C2G Music Hall.

In the intervening five years, the young women (and their eventual percussionist, Michael Dause) signed a contract to record four albums with producer (and rock legend) Marshall Crenshaw, were named a “breakout act” at the SXSW Music Festival by Billboard magazine and were described as the one of the best unsigned bands in America by musicologist Jim Linderman.

Given how hard it is for most local bands in America to stir substantive national interest in their music, it can be no accident that the Accidentals have risen so far so fast.

They’re really good.

At the risk of sounding like I have no idea what I’m talking about, I’ll compare them to Nickel Creek, the Band Perry and other acts that mix traditional American musical forms (bluegrass, country, jazz and folk music) and make the results as instantly captivating as the best pop (without doing any of those influences a disservice).

The band had instant chemistry, of course, but some dues paying did ensue. Buist said they had no idea what they were doing at first. They owe some their current polish to aid provided by a vibrant and nurturing Traverse City music scene.

“A lot of musicians in the area came around and really supported us,” she said. “We owe it to Traverse City as a whole for coming around and doing that. Not just the musicians but the people too. Pretty soon all of Michigan started to be like that. We’re kind of trying to take that general love for music and bring it other places.”

But things certainly did happen fast. For example, the band had to wait until the summer of 2014 to tour in earnest because Larson had not yet graduated from high school.

Buist said they performed 218 shows last year.

Touring has been “one of the most difficult and amazing experiences a 19 or 20 year old could ask for,” she said.

“We’ve learned how to keep ourselves healthy on the road,” she said. “We’ve learned how to load in over 100 shows. And it’s also about socializing. We’re both really introverted and shy and it’s really hard to throw yourself into extrovert mode and start talking to people.”

Getting comfortable on stage is a work in progress, Larson said.

“It’s been a very huge learning curve,” she said. ‘It’s been a slow-and-steady, taking-it-step-by-step kind of thing. When we first started playing out, we would play ‘rock, paper, scissors’ to figure out who had to talk first. I think we’re still kind of a shy band.”

A shy band that found the courage to collaborate and perform with Marshall Crenshaw.

How that came about was that Crenshaw found a song by the band on the Reverb Nation website and liked it so much, he reached out.

“I said, ‘All right. This is like a remarkable thing,’” Crenshaw told the Local Spins website in August of last year.

“They just have natural ability,” Crenshaw said. “They’re children of artists. They have a work ethic about their art and they understand how to approach the process.”

Crenshaw is producing the band’s first album and has said that he will take it upon himself to shop it around to labels.

The Billboard accolade also came out of nowhere. The band didn’t believe it at first.

“We thought it was photoshopped the first time we saw it,” Buist said. “We didn’t get any notification. I think one of our fans saw it and said, ‘Hey did you guys know that you’re one of the top seven breakout bands at SXSW according to Billboard magazine.’

“We were like, ‘No way!’” she said

Given that both women are under 21, it is understandable that they’d claim the last five years have passed slowly for them.

But when they’re made to think about it in hindsight by an old journalist for whom time passes really quickly, they realize how improbable and magical it has all been, Buist said.

“We’re playing SXSW,” she said. “We’re playing at a couple of rock venues and opening for acts like Keller Williams, Rusted Root and the Wailers. It keeps escalating into craziness. It’s like this whole crazy, dream roller coaster.”

Buist said they’ve tried to be totally present and in the moment so they “don’t forget anything.”

“We’ve actually documented some of it via video,” she said. “We’re making sure we’re really embracing this part of our lives because not many people do what we’re doing right now.”