“The five members of Stokeswood woke up one day in a black van with a trailer full of equipment and not one of them knew how they got there.”

Stokeswood made a name for itself thanks to a strong fan base, the power of the internet and a dedication to doing things its own way. Courtesy Stokeswood

That’s the bio Atlanta-based electronica act Stokeswood has placed on its Facebook profile page — although apparently, the bio has another story behind it other than a “Hangover”-esque awakening.

“Maybe like four or five years ago when all the profile websites and social media things really started to be important to the indie band, like MySpace and just having to make all these profiles, I was so tired of formulating this bio about who we were as a band and all,” said lead guitarist Mark Godwin. “I don’t even care about that, it’s just about the music for me.”

Like the band bio, the five-piece has cultivated a new genre of electronica that sounds like a crossbreed between Vampire Weekend and Ghostland Observatory — with the tempo changes of Pet Sounds mixed in. Part of the evolution came from experimentation on the band’s sophomore album, “In the Field of Vibrations.”

“For instance in  ‘Tightrope Talent’ there was just a riff that Reed [Irvine] on his keyboards, and I started playing with him and added more drums to it, and Adam came in to do vocals and we were literally like, ‘Get in there and sing something,’” said bassist Justin Mullinix. “And he’s like, ‘I don’t know what to sing I’ve never heard this before’ and we were just like, ‘Well you better think of something really quick’ and he jumped in the vocal booth and in the very first take created the chorus. That chorus did not change one note to what it is today and that’s how spontaneous it was on the second album.”

And equally important to Stokeswood’s approach to music are the live shows the band has become known for, particularly the occasional costume appearances on stage.

“Just on some random occasions we’ll come decked out in odd costumes,” Godwin said. “We’ve been Christmas elves, old people — for no reason at all just because we want to and we can.”

The group has also cultivated a live vibe that Justin Mullinix described as a “good-time emporium.”

“They absolutely lose their minds,” Mullinix said. “We play a really emotional kind of music as opposed to intellectual, where people are really interested at looking into players and seeing what’s going on. We just try to come out as a big unit, just blow the sound out and hopefully have people losing their minds.”

Stokeswood’s on-stage style has gained it a solid fanbase in Atlanta and has solidified the band’s spot in Miami’s nightclub scene.

“We decided there was a really good buzz down there around us and the night scene there is late and they love dancing and just thought it would be a great testing ground,” Godwin said. “It’s an entertainment city so it definitely had the buzz to make it worth our while to come down there once a month and we just went for it and so eventually we were playing places like that once a month and built a fanbase. We have a pretty good following down there now.”

Although most bands on the rise to regional fame want nothing more than to sign a record deal, Stokeswood is steering away from that path — a lot of which had to do with Mullinix’s  e in the music business.

“Before I started working with them [Stokeswood], I was working exclusively in the studio in the music industry and just working with bands and the stuff that I was seeing that was going on in the music industry was that the labels were out of money, they didn’t know what to do, they were stuck on an old model of how to promote bands and what to do and how to treat bands more specifically I think,” Mullinix said. “And I was just like, ‘There’s no need to even entertain getting signed unless they come up with an offer that is just mind blowing,’”

With the evidence in successful crowd turnouts and internet distribution of its music, Stokeswood is showing you don’t need a gigantic record deal to have a following. The band is now looking to spread its influence all over the Southeast including a new market — Athens.

“We’re really focusing, now that we have a big market under our belt, on all the Southeast, and naturally Athens is just a city we really wanna tackle,” Godwin said. “There’s a lot of music fans there and a lot of good bands, a lot of great places to play etc … etc … and we just really wanna hammer it down in the home base of the Southeast.”

STOKESWOOD

Where: No Where Bar

When: 10 p.m.

Price: $4 (before 11 p.m.), $5 (after 11 p.m.)