The eminently danceable music of Brooklyn-based Xylos started out as a solo project that’s bloomed into a fully-fledged pop-synth quintet. After guitarist Eric Zeiler invited friends, including members of Yeasayer, to lend vocals to the aptly-titled Bedrooms EP in 2008, the band’s eponymous first album came out this past April to much acclaim: Xylos was named a New York Times Critics’ Choice for its “self-consciously styled electro-pop.” The band benefits from the diverse musical backgrounds of three songwriters: Zeiler, reformed jazz vocalist Monika Heidemann and keyboardist Nikki Lancy and her folk roots. While Heidemann’s smoky alto leads the way, Zeiler, Lancy and bassist Jordan Brooks lend harmonies over Chris Berry’s tight drumming. DCist had a chance to catch up with Zeiler by phone last night before the band came to town to play with Guards (led by Richie James Follins of Cults) and D.C.’s very own Brandon Minow at DC9 tonight for Monument’s one-year anniversary party, which will benefit local youth literacy non profit 826DC. Zeiler spoke with DCist about childhood relics, the lasting influence of Guns N’ Roses and what it means to truly collaborate.

I wanted to ask how the tour went.

We did a big tour in March involving SXSW, and then we did a short little northeast tour a couple weeks ago, which was great. We’re doing some sporadic shows this month, and then were hitting the road in July again for a big tour. It’s been good. It’s getting to that season where it’s really nice to be on the road. It’s actually really hot here in New York today. It’s probably hot down there too.

Yeah, it’s like 100 degrees.

I installed my A/C today. I always hold out, thinking I can deal with it for a couple of days, but today I said, “no.”

I was going to ask, in relation to the heat, what your best strategy for beating it would be? But I guess installing A/C would be at the top of the list.

Sit inside in the A/C. In our rehearsal space we have A/C too, but there’s something about holding out for as long as possible, because once it goes on, you’re living in that thing for the next three months. Today we sweated it out at rehearsal. We ordered banh mi sandwiches and had them delivered with iced bubble tea. So, drink iced bubble tea.

Any preferred place to drink outside in Brooklyn? I feel like that’s the D.C. strategy: drink outside.

This is the summer of the biergarten in New York. I heard there’s twenty new ones opening, so there’s going to be 70 beer gardens in the city this summer. My favorite one is called Radegast in Williamsburg. It’s in the Czech biergarten tradition, not the German, so it’s slightly different.

Have you played D.C. before?

We have. We always have a good time. The last two shows were awesome. We were at the Red Palace in March with the Parlotones from South Africa, and then a month before that we played with Tapes ‘n Tapes at the Rock and Roll Hotel. It’s a really fun town. D.C. sort of has the reputation for bands that unless you’re playing on a Friday or Saturday night, it’s hard to get people out to your show, but we’ve always found the crowds to be great, people love the music and buy the record. The last few shows we’ve had there have been spectacular. It was our first time in Northeast. We’ve played DC9 before, and Iota in Arlington a while back. We’re excited to play DC9 again.

They have a roof deck now.

That’s going to help, because it’s going to be beautiful out.

D.C. is a big tourist destination, of course. Do you like to play tourist in cities you visit? Have you played shows in any of the members’ hometowns?

We don’t get to do enough of that. I think every band complains about that. On tour, we show up for soundcheck at five, play, and then sleep and leave in the morning or leave that night. If we have a day off, we try to spend some time that day and see what’s going on. In D.C. we have, because we’ve been down there a lot. We’re all from the northeast. Monika is from the Boston area, so we played up there and her mom was at one of the shows. My parents are from New York, so they are at literally every show here as long as it’s before midnight. There are certain shows that are way out in Brooklyn, in some loft space at one in the morning. They don’t show up for those.

When did you know that you needed to transition your songwriting from a solo project to a full band?

It was sort of out of necessity, because I cannot sing very well. I started off by writing these songs and recording them in a studio I had in my bedroom. I needed people to sing on it, because I was writing these vocal parts, but my voice was not working on it. I had my close friends who were singers come over and sing on it. And after we made this EP, it just felt right and we decided to turn it into a band. Being not a singer forced me to work with other people, as long as I wanted to have vocals with my music. But the band has evolved now to the point where I’m not the songwriter. We have three songwriters now: Nikki, Monika and myself. We work together on everything. It took the course from being a solo thing to a true collaboration, more than most bands.

Do you think your fans can tell, without looking at any sort of liner notes, who each song originated from?

Well the funny thing is even if they have the liner notes they won’t be able to tell. “All songs by Xylos” is how we do things now. They should be able to if they listen to the first album, and then when the next one comes around, we’re already starting to fall into certain…I feel like I could tell. There are all certain things we each bring to the table, but we all work on the songs together, so they end up sounding like Xylos. We all write with this band in mind. We’re not going to play an acoustic, slow folk song in this band. Nikki comes from that background where she used to write a lot of acoustic folk songs, and finger pick on her guitar, but she doesn’t bring those songs to us. She brings the songs to us that are more uptempo and dancey and poppy. We have all sort of, in the year we’ve been doing this, merged our songwriting together, but there are still distinct elements that are clear to me. Because Monika sings the lead on all the songs, it’s not like Fleetwood Mac where you think, “oh, well this person sings lead on this song, so they wrote it.”

All your press compares you to a lot of musical touchstones. Who do you think Xylos sounds like, or who would you strive to sound like, perhaps not in terms of literal sound, but quality, cohesion, progression?

I don’t know who we strive to sound like. I feel like every review I read compares Monika to a different female singer, a lot who I’ve never heard of. The most common one is Annie Lennox from the Eurythmics. I kind of hear that. Monika has a fairly deep alto for a woman. It’s a lot of ’80s references, which I think has to do with our choice of instruments, synth and drums, and with Monikas voice it has sort of an ’80s sound. And thats not what were going for. We all do listen to ’80s music, but I like to think of us as more modern. I think we’re all getting back to using a lot of similar sounds from the ’80s when these drums machines and synths were invented.

Lately, I’ve been really into James Blake and The XX and that sort of minimalism, and I think that will inform potentially some of our new songs. We’re always striving to do “less is more.” Everyone just thinks, “layer, layer, layer sound and layer harmonies,” but we try to check ourselves and ask, “does that really need to be there?”

So this show you’re playing is a benefit for 826DC, part of Dave Eggers’ larger national youth literacy non-profit. I wanted to ask what’s the first book you remember reading?

I remember reading all the Dr. Seuss books as a kid. The first book I remember seeking out on my own was Bridge to Terabithia. I remember it was one of those depressing endings I gravitated towards at a young age. I guess I still do.

The first album I ever sought out was Appetite for Destruction, and the first book was Bridge to Terabithia. I was very young and I remember seeing a video for “Paradise City”. I saw Slash playing guitar, and I said, “that’s what I want to do!” I made my mom take me to K-Mart, and I bought that tape and I wore out that tape until it couldn’t play anymore.

If you ever meet Slash, you can tell him “you’re why I do what I do.”

He’s still great. He still looks exactly the same.

Speaking of childhood, when I saw the cover for your new album, I remembered that when I last saw you, in October at CMJ, you had a Lite-Brite on stage. It seems to have made its way onto the the new album cover. When did that come into the mix?

A friend of ours who is an artist gave us a gift: that Lite-Brite that he had as a kid, and he had designed our logo onto it. We started putting it on stage. At every show, people would say, “oh, I love your Lite-Brite!” Our music started to mold into synth and dance, and it worked with the Lite-Brite. It became our branding. So we decided to integrate it into our cover. When Nikki is asked that question, she likes to say our music has a youthful, nostalgic quality, so it works for that. We’ve been experimenting with not having it on stage. We have this new kind of art installation that Monika made with colored tubes, so now we have the Lite-Brite sitting on our merch table. Putting it on the cover was a way to tie our stage vibe with the record and have a cohesive motif.

Xylos plays with Guards and Brandon Minow tonight at DC9, as part of Monument’s one year anniversary. Tickets are $15 and all proceeds from the evening will benefit 826DC.