Their solution: booking a few shows around town under a made-up name to gig through the pain. "The venues needed a little bio so we came up with this description that we were French existentialists," Taylor said, laughing. "It was like a total BS bio…a band name you couldn't find anywhere else on the web."

For the trio's very first gig — a late show at the Mercury Lounge in New York City — Taylor, Eric Zeiler and Matt Lewkowicz were not Little Daylight, but an electro-pop band from France. And the 50 or 60 people who showed up to hear the band secretly play songs off their debut EP, Tunnelvision, seemed into it. Even if they thought they were seeing another, more recognizable, French band.

"Two songs in, you could literally hear them saying, 'Is this Phoenix?'" Zeiler said. "Then they realized we weren't Phoenix and by the third song most of them started clapping. They were excited about something we were doing. We must have converted them."

Now after a little live practice, Little Daylight have found their stride as an intimate dance band, showcasing the more electronic aspects of their music alongside some quieter sonic elements.

Mixing in influences that range from ambient electronic artist Jon Hopkins to New Orleans jazz to Tom Petty makes it hard to categorize Little Daylight as a straight-up pop band. They're something more hyphenated.

"We are fully about the song, and a lot of things about pop now are about trends and production techniques. We don't fully buy into that stuff," Zeiler explained. "I think we're as much of a rock band as we are a pop band. We're as much an alternative band as we are a rock band."