Sweet Spirit is a nine-piece band from Austin, Texas that fills the stage with horns, harmonies and a raucous cacophony of guitars playing pop licks. Taking musical cues from genres such as Motown, 1970s British rock and country music, Sweet Spirit was hyped as a buzz band way before their self-titled debut EP came out early this year. (No small thanks to a co-sign from Spoon frontman Brett Daniel.) Charismatic frontwoman Sabrina Ellis talks to Myspace about why she wants to work with Taylor Swift and Willie Nelson, and what the band would bring if they were trapped on a desert island.

Hometown(s): Texas, New Jersey, California, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia

Homebase: Austin, Texas.  We love it here.  The city is constantly changing and growing.  There is always a swimming hole within 20 minutes of you, and lots of good food and good clubs.

Where is your name from?

In the movie Electric Children, a radical Christian character refers to homely women as "sweet spirits."  That was the inspiration for our name. We soon found out it's also a gospel song that Elvis performed. Double blessed!

How did Sweet Spirit come together? How did you all meet?

(Co-founder) Andrew Cashen and I made friends in high school. We knew we wouldn't get dates to the homecoming dance, so we started a cover band called Youth In Asia. High school buddy and Youth In Asia drummer Orville Neeley would become our drummer in A Giant Dog, which we started in Austin when we were 22. A Giant Dog is made up of our closest friends from high school and is still going strong. Every song is loud, fast and heavy.

Eventually, we felt the urge to write pop songs. Mid-tempo stuff with lots of guitar harmonies and vocal harmonies, keys ... a full-on 1960s to 1970s rock & roll experience. We started writing more sensitive material, drawing on everyone from Patsy Cline to James Brown, Chuck Berry to the Everly Brothers, Sly and the Family Stone to The Pixies. Queen, lots of Queen and ELO and The Kinks.

We got the rest of the band from other bands around town that we liked. Danny Lion and Jon Fichter came from Megabig. Jake Knight from Bobby Jealousy. Cara Tillman from Burgess Meredith. We wanted a group that would live and breathe music, and we got it.

When did you realize you wanted to take Sweet Spirit seriously?

I think it was when we became friends with Britt Daniel of Spoon. Andrew and I have another band, A Giant Dog, that's been around for seven years. During SXSW 2014, Britt started coming to a lot of our shows. Seeing him there encouraged me. He told us we should get better organized, so we did, and things started to fall into place. He seems to truly love what he does, and he's done it a while. This is definitely what Andrew and I hope to be doing for a while, too.

What's it like collaborating with Britt?

Britt has taught me a lot since getting to know him. We've been lucky to meet him and to have him take an interest in our music. He's offered us opportunities we couldn't have made on our own. He's offered advice and encouragement. Most of all he's shown us how important it is to help others who need a little encouragement. My hope is that someday Sweet Spirit will be in a position to encourage younger bands, taking new acts on tour so thousands of people can see them.

He is easy to work with, the most easy-going perfectionist I know. And he plays a mean shaker.  

Who else would you love to collaborate with?

We actually have a list of 10 artists we'd love to collaborate with in the future. It's a mental list, something we talk about on tour, and it's secret.  

The top local artist we want to collaborate with is Willie Nelson. To get him to sing even just one line of a song would be a damn dream come true. He is one of the best songwriters of all time.

If we could get the attention of Taylor Swift, we'd love to work with her, too. She seems like a smart, strong person who wants to positively influence the world in her time. I'd love to help her do that.

What inspired the songs on your EP?

Let's see... "Let Me Be On Top" is one of the songs from our EP. It's a sassy, upbeat number about ruthless ambition. The song is satirical, overstating my capacities for both good and evil and giving unsolicited success advice. The chorus states, "If I ask real nice, you'll let me be on top."  Most people who listen will just hear that and think it's a song about sex. All songs have something to do with sex, so I'm happy with that interpretation. This song is an empowering cry to fake it 'til you make it. People can take that any way they want.

"Babydoll" is a song about unrequited love, or lust, with a stubborn hook that insists, "Babydoll, I'll see you later, no one knows that we're together. Late at night, I like to dream you're mine."  I just wanted to write a song about not feeling as pretty or as adequate as the other girls, but deserving love anyway. My favorite song growing up was the calypso-infused "If You Wanna Be Happy," by Jimmy Soul. I remember my toothless grandmother in Mississippi singing it to me as a little girl, stomping her feet and clapping her hands. "Babydoll" could be considered my fan-fic sequel to "If You Wanna Be Happy."

What are your day jobs? Do they help you make music?

Cara and Leslie are both paralegals who moonlight as rock & rollers. The rest of us are in the service industry. We are all lucky to have good employers who respect what we do. I am currently at Ramen Tatsu-ya. We are on the road a lot. It is awesome to return to a job with good food and a tight knit staff who respects each others' ambitions. I value my time at home more and more now that I am on the road a lot.  

Andrew has been known to say that working in a routine, doing mindless repetitive work, helps him come up with riffs. He always has two jobs in addition to the music and he is the most productive person I know, a song machine.  

If you were trapped on a desert island, what three things would you take with you as a band?

So there's nine people in Sweet Spirit, and we somehow end up marooned on an island together. This sounds like a perfect scenario for a reality show. We only get three things, and there are nine of us. The first would have to be a piano. It's a percussive instrument that is also tonal, so it could make up for the other instruments we lost. Multiple people could play it at once, which would minimize fighting.

Second, a magnifying glass so we can start fires, sterilize water, cauterize wounds, cook food. Third, a knife so we can carve spears, clean fish, perform minor surgeries, trim our toenails.