Elephone's music has been bubbling in the trenches of rock parables, playing prominent spots at Austin's SXSW, San Francisco's Noise Pop Festival and the Live 105 studios, and sharing the stage with the likes of Rogue Wave, The Dandy Warhols, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Stills, The Kills, and The Posies. Sonically, their collective, multi-vocal pop lands somewhere between The Talking Heads and The Arcade Fire.

Lambert got his start in film and television, and cinema continues to influence the band's approach. Elephone guitarist Terry Ashkinos describes their music as being like a Wes Anderson movie ­ full of simple, slow motion junctures in time. "That's what we try to do in music... Have these moments, these little crescendos of feeling," he says. Not surprisingly, the album title of Elephone's forthcoming release, Canister, refers to a film canister. "There are lots of life as film and film as life references on the record," Ashkinos explains.

Canister provides the listener with more hooks than ever before. While singer Ryan Lambert controlled vocal duties on previous records, the new album features the addition of singer and keyboardist Sierra Frost. The result is a playful mixture of dark, haunting male vocals and sweet, spunky female vocals ­ Lambert is the coffee and Frost is the sugar and cream.

Canister was recorded on analog equipment because "the band wanted the album to reflect something honest and real", says bassist Dan Settle. "The ethic is that you hear an album that the band actually played A recording is meant to capture a moment in time". Canister does just that.

Elephone has seen the world from the inside of old touring vans, had at least one crazy ex-bass player who mooched money from them then mysteriously disappeared, and they've seen the flicker of too many beers in their audience's eyes. They've reached 14 on the CMJ charts and received regular play on stations like BAGeL Radio and SomaFM. As one writer for The Deli Magazine declared, "If this band doesn't continue to increase in popularity, I may lose my faith in the system."