Seattle – Electro-pop trio Little Daylight spent some time with Best New Bands while on tour in Seattle. The Brooklyn band’s first full-length album, Hello Memory, was released this past July on Capitol Records. We went into the Pike Street Fish Fry next door to the venue for some dinner while our former Featured Artists chatted about the tour, their diverse style, and their new music coming out in two weeks.
This is the first date on tour that you aren’t headlining, right? You started the tour headlining and now you’re playing with Clean Bandit.
Nikki Taylor: Yes
Matt Lewkowicz: There are benefits and there are drawbacks. The one benefit is, we realized when opening, is after sound check, we can just leave it. It’s going to be exactly the same as we left it. Whereas if you’re headlining you have to take the guitars off stage, re-tune them again so that’s a pro.
And what about the cons?
Nikki: It’s nice to have people knowing, you know…being there for you. Knowing all the songs, singing the words to it. That’s just really fun.
Is that how the beginning of the tour was?
Nikki: Yeah.
Matt: Well this is like part three of the tour. Like, this is the third section of these three mini tours that have all kinda become one tour. And the other two legs have been headlining. One of them with Young Rising Sons and the other one with this band Mainland and this band White Prism. And both of those legs have just been awesome. People know our album now because it’s been out for a few months. Going to cities where we are not sure what the reception was going to be like when we get there and all a sudden we see 20 people in the front show, like in DC. They were singing along to every single song we played. That’s something we’ve never experienced before
Eric Zeiler: Not to say that won’t happen tonight! It very well might, but it won’t be everyone in the audience because they aren’t primarily here to see us.
Female-fronted electro-pop bands are pretty popular right now. Have you found that the community is supportive of an emerging band like you?
Nikki: The community of female singers?
Yes.
Nikki: Yeah I mean I’ve been beaten up on the playground more than once by female fronted bands (laughs). No, I’m kidding. But for sure! We’ve been on tour with Marina and the Diamonds, Charli XCX. And they’ve all been really awesome. I guess this is kind of a non-answer but, any band you’re with you become friendly with. You don’t see them much as female-fronted versus male-fronted. So on the outset you’re like, oh it’s another female band, but that all washed away after you’re on tour for a while. But I’m also used to being the only girl.
Matt: Nikki has thick skin! Three tours ago, first night of the tour, Nikki walks into the green room a few minutes after we did and it was a total of 18 dudes all in this small green room.
Nikki: And I’m the only girl!
Matt: But it doesn’t faze Nikki. I think it’s a pretty great assist for her.
At the same time, are you often compared to artists like Chvrches?
Nikki: We do. That’s exactly who we get compared to.
Eric: Somebody on Instagram asked if we’ve heard of them.
Nikki: I think my voice sounds a bit like hers. I mean she has an accent I don’t have.
Eric: We’re much more of a rock band live, with a guitar and bass and drums.
Besides producing your own original work, there seems to be quite a few remixes that you guys do. Is that also a part of your identity as a band?
Eric: Yeah I’d say its part of our identity. It was a big part of us finding our sound early on.
So it was something that you started off doing?
Matt: We started doing remixes concurrently with original music. But the remixes were a more causal way of getting into the studio and not feeling like there were as many goals, we just wanted to make something sound good and we used that as an exercise, basically for the original stuff.
Eric: We don’t do it as much. We do it when we’re home from tours. But the focus is definitely on our own music now.
Nikki: Touring is hard. We did a remix for Bastile when we were on the road, in the van. And that was really hard. So we haven’t done as much remixing while we’ve been touring.
When was your cover of David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” released? Was in released while you were on tour?
Nikki: Yes!
Eric: We did it right before, in August, when we were home for a couple weeks. And then we put it out right before tour because it’s good to play live. And it’s been so fun.
Is Bowie an inspiration of yours?
Matt: Yes!
Nikki: We love David Bowie. And that song is so much fun. It’s great to perform live and hopefully we took it to a little bit of an unsuspecting place. We turn it into a dance jam and everyone gets down.
Your sound as a whole is pretty diverse. Does that leave room for you to tour and collaborate with many different kinds of bands and musicians?
Nikki: Absolutely.
Eric: Yes. Like one of the first tracks we did called “Name in Lights,” we talked about trying to get a rapper on it. We can definitely see ourselves working with different types of people.
Matt: That also goes for touring. Because you want to have something to do with the band you’re touring with. And I think we can pair with a lot of different sounds. Like we toured with The Neighbourhood. And we’re not in the same genre, but there’s enough crossover where their fans became our fans. And I think it’s because our sound has a lot of rock elements in there with the electronic.
Nikki: I could see us opening for Haim, or someone really electronic.
Matt: The fans are also open-minded. I think these days music is moving in a direction where people listen to a lot of other things.
Any singles that the crowd has responded really well to?
Eric: Our single “My Life,” we just made a music video for it and a bunch of remixes. It’s the first song on the record and now that it’s been out, people know it.
Matt: We just made a kick ass video for it. We spent a whole weekend not sleeping, running around upstate New York, and the beach, we’ve been having a lot of fun with it. We’re excited for people to see it.
What’s the release date for the video?
Matt: October 9.
Even though you are signed to a major label (Capitol) do you still do all the producing yourselves?
Nikki: Yes. We do everything.
Eric: They signed us because they liked the fact that we are writers and producers. They believe in that.
Little Daylight has a handful of dates remaining on their third leg.
Jess Keller
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