What stared as playing in a basement for fun has now evolved into a full-blown musical effort as Tokyo Police Club get ready to release their debut LP, Elephant Shell, barely three years after forming the band in 2005.

Tokyo Police Club is definitely a welcome sound in an industry filled with the same old tunes. Hailing from Newmarket, Canada, the band built a following while playing small shows throughout the Toronto area and finally received some recognition after playing in the Pop Montreal festival, where they were spotted by Paper Bag Records and signed to the label.

It’s been two years since the release of their EP A Lesson In Crime (which was criticized for being too short at 16:22); Tokyo Police Club is now a bit more seasoned as a band after playing hundreds of shows from tiny clubs to the festival throngs at Coachella, Lollapalooza and the Glastonbury Festival in England. “They were long drives that equated to not a lot of sleep, so we were exhausted,” Wright says. “But we were really not expecting too many people to show up to the shows, but were pleasantly surprised when hundreds of fans were waiting for us at the venues.”

But fans shouldn’t expect a big drastic change from their EP to LP. “I’m too close to the songs to really tell the changes, but in some ways, the new songs are pretty much in the same style of the EP,” says Wright. Although the long-player was two years in the making, most of the new songs were written at the last minute, weeks before the final version was due. With a name that makes absolutely no sense (it was a lyric on their first song “Cheer It On” off the EP and doesn’t have any real significance), Tokyo Police Club is hoping to make sense in a fickle music industry by proving their worth on Elephant Shell.