At the recent Full Moon fest (see full review), we had the chance to sit down and talk to Little Daylight. The band is only a little over a year old but has already toured with some big name acts and scored a blogosphere hit with “Overdose.” We spoke to Nikki (vocals), Matt (synth/guitar), and Eric (bass) about their love of remixes, what it’s like to tour with Charlie XCX, and how crazy the last year has been for them.
You just got off tour with Charlie XCX what was that like?
Eric: She’s very talented and we had a really good time. We went down the East Coast. We’re actually gonna go back out with her in September because we had such a blast!
Nikki: Yeah, we had a great time hanging out with her and we can’t wait to do it again in the fall.
How does a tour like that compare to playing festivals?
Eric: We really haven’t played many festivals. we really haven’t played many shows. were still fairly new band. When you’re on tour though it’s your job it’s all you’re doing. You’re very focused on getting to the venue and sound checking and then performing to get up and do it again the next day.
Nikki: The best part about tour as opposed to a festival is that you really get to hang out with the band. You really get to know them and you’re living the same life so it’s pretty fun.
Do you do anything different for your sets at a festival as opposed to when you’re on tour?
Eric: We don’t. We’re fairly new band and we only have seven songs. By the fall will have more songs and by then we’ll have more to pick and choose what we play.
Matt: Right now we have about 30 songs in development that we’re trying to hash out in the studio leading up to our album. To play something out, we are very fastidious and it has to go through a lot of filters. It is meant to be an adult song by the time we perform it.
You were known for your remixes. Are you now just going to focus on new stuff and originals or are you still going to remixes?
Nikki: We just released a remix for Ra Ra Riot. It’s definitely something we still love to do. We started out doing both those and originals and we hope to continue that. It’s two different things Doing originals is realizing a vision while remixing is taking someone else’s work and flipping it around and doing something cool with it. We really enjoy it.
Matt: do we flip it and reverse it?
Nikki: I was going to say that then I stopped myself but I’m glad you said it.
So what can you tell me about what you’re doing in the studio right now?
Eric: Before we would always go into the studio for one week at a time just record a song. Now were taking more time. We rented a house in Brooklyn and set up a studio in it. So we’re taking little pieces of ideas and spending a couple days on them. We are not focusing on completing anything at this time; we’re just doing little experiments and it’s fun.
Matt: What were focusing on with the writing process leading up to the album as opposed leading up to the EP is that we’re recording a song and then sitting on it, working on other stuff and then coming back to it. What happened before is we recorded songs and then months later something would become available to us that would’ve sounded great with those songs. Now we can go through these half breeded songs and seeing what is speaking to us after sleeping on them basically. It’s a much lower stress process and it’s exciting.
So this has been a crazy year for you guys, going from new band to playing festivals. How did you go from inception to now?
Matt: We are very mindful of how we wanted the year to go. We knew we wanted to start by putting out remixes for a while so the remixes could help pave the way for originals. We knew we wanted to start touring around SXSW. We were hoping that we would be able to start work on our album around summer. But getting to tour with great bands and playing festivals by June definitely exceeded where we thought we would be.
So considering you’ve been so mindful of where you’re going, where do you see yourself by the end of the year?
Eric: Well we are putting out our EP in August. Being able to present a collection of music is really awesome for us. A lot of what happens after that will depend on how the EP is received. But as I said we are working hard on our album and we hope to complete that By fall with a release early next year. So we’ve been rapidly creating music with the hopes to get a lot of music out between now any year from now. And we plan to tour like crazy once we have the album out. We already have one tour in the fall schedule and will probably do another one. In the new year we’ll tour like crazy and go to SXSW again. We’ve always wanted to do that: writing and recording albums then going on tour and then repeat.
So have you based this formula on anything you’ve seen from other band? Like the remixes then originals then tour.
Nikki: The remix to originals idea is just something we came up with because we thought it would be a good idea to just get our name out there. It’s not like we saw someone else be successful with it, it just made sense. But were very mindful and respectful of other artists career paths who are trying to do the same thing But we are trying to do our own thing.
Matt: One thing we did see them all other artists that worked for them was being slow about putting out songs. We had finished two or three songs but none were ready to be our first single. When we finished “Overdose” we knew that was going to be the first single.
Can you speak to “Overdose” and what made it stand out to you as the first single?
Matt: We were really excited that “Overdose” felt like the next step from what we were doing with remixes. A bunch of blogs have been very supportive with our remixes and we didn’t want to come out of left field with something that didn’t make sense. The reason “Overdose” came about was because of the work we had done with remixes. We felt it was a very strong composition. It was powerful and kind of max where we were at that point.
So with new stuff coming down the pike are there any songs that you’re particularly excited about?
Eric: We actually have a few songs that we play live that aren’t going to be on the EP but will be on the album. It is kind of a fun thing to be performing them live but they’re not going to be coming out until probably 2014.
Can we get a name?
Eric: Yeah one is called “Mona Lisa.” People know it by name now because they’ve seen us a bunch of times And it’s been getting a great response. We are excited about it but we didn’t feel like it fit on the EP; It was more of an album song.
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