Known for reinventing its songs during live performances, the English electropop band Hot Chip [ tickets ] likens itself to a covers band.

"We improvise within the gigs and we tend to not really bother to stick too closely to the kind of rulebook that's the record," frontman Alexis Taylor said during an interview from England with LiveDaily. "We don't have the record there with us while we're rehearsing. We don't try to match the drum sound or the keyboard sound. We just start playing a bit like a covers band, covering our own songs."

Taylor explained that, by changing up the songs, it puts more emphasis on the tunes themselves.

"It's like saying, 'We can do this in many different ways,' I suppose, rather than feeling rigidly tied to all of the sounds you had on a record you made in one particular moment in time," Taylor said. "It's like trying to let the songs live a little bit."

Hot Chip is in the United States through Oct. 9 in support of the album "Made in the Dark," which hit stores in early February and spawned the single "Shake a Fist." Before the tour started, Taylor explained he was looking forward to the jaunt because, among other things, the band is returning to the use of a live drummer.

"We have quite a good time when we come to America," said Taylor, who, at the time of the interview, was shopping for costumes for an Isle of Wight performance. "It's a fun tour to do and we're looking forward to playing quite a bit of older material we haven't played for awhile, and playing with this new drummer we're gonna have. We haven't really had many shows where we've had live drums. In our world, that's quite big news."

Touring the United States is also inspirational to Taylor.

"For me, it's one of the most important places we can play; a lot of my favorite music is made by Americans and has been for a long time, said Taylor, who lists Willie Nelson, Prince, Public Enemy, Tim Buckley, Arthur Russell, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Bill Withers and the Andrews Sisters among his favorite American musicians. "I feel like America is where pop music kind of began. It's exciting for us to go there to offer our own version of that."

Taylor said the title of the album, "Made in the Dark," is very telling. For one, it represents the notion of meeting someone new and getting to know them, being in the dark about things, trusting each other and then, he said, literally being in the dark with a lover. He also linked it to Hot Chip's creative process.

"With the record, we thought it was a phrase that summed up the approach to music making we have, being fairly non-prescriptive about how we're going to write songs and just sort of allowing things to happen in a free and unconscious way, not really discussing things."