For a band based in downtown New York, Elefant are surprisingly up-front in their defense of pop music.

"We like pop music," bassist Jeff Berrall said. "It's not a cool contest with us."

Those words would be poison to the ears of certain adamantly indie, hipper-than-thou New York bands, but Elefant have confidence in their relationship with the tight, polished pop track.

"Pop has such a negative vibe to it," Argentinean lead singer Diego Garcia said.

"We're here to change that," Berrall added.

Elefant's debut full-length, Sunlight Makes Me Paranoid, is a 10-track disc that clocks in at just over 31 minutes and focuses squarely and solely on love — finding it, losing it and dancing in celebration or in memory of it.

"Love is kind of the central theme of the record," said Garcia, "and it's one of those words in the English language that really doesn't have a definition. It's fun to write about, 'cause it can be fun, it can be happy, it can be sad or strong. It can lead to people doing the craziest things, unimaginable things, violent things, beautiful things."

In Garcia's case, it led him to move to New York. "I was totally head over heels for a redhead," he recalled. "So I moved to New York [to be with her]. It's tough when you finally get to the city. But I came with my guitar, ready to do this."

When Garcia touched down in the city, he began to work on putting a band together. There were no magical meetings or fateful partnerships, just a group of musicians who wanted to play the same kind of music with the same attitude.

"I guess it's the same way you get a softball team," mused Garcia of the band's formation. "Being in the circle, you know?"

Once he found Berrall, drummer Kevin McAdams and a guitarist known simply as Mod, Garcia took Elefant into the studio to record their first EP, last year's Gallery Girl. Garcia then tapped into his catalog of diary-entry songs about girls he "kissed here and there and stuff like that" for Sunlight Makes Me Paranoid.

The full-length is cohesive, connected musically by its Britpop and new-wave sound and lyrically by its fixation on love. While the lyrics range from simple and sweet to brooding and melancholy, the instrumentals stay largely up-tempo, making almost all 10 tracks danceable.

Sunlight opens with "Make Up," an instrumentally sparse track that invites the listener to "Get up and dance around the room/ My eyes are on you."

The lyrics in the chorus of "Misfit," the first single, read like a single man's pickup line at a bar: "Tell me your name, tell me your story/ 'Cause I'm into it." The song was recently used as the soundtrack to a sex scene on the television show "Life as We Know It," which stars Kelly Osbourne (see "Kelly Osbourne Willing To Take Abuse For The Greater Good").

"Our song was being played when Kelly walked into a room and saw her neighbor hooking up with her friend," Garcia recounted. "He's got his shirt off, and you hear the song kind of creeping through the door. Then it blasts through, and they go to commercial. That was so gratifying!"

The rest of the album's lyrics vary, from the simple rhymes of "Tonight Let's Dance" ("She was standing beneath the chandelier/ I offered her chocolate and some beer") to the more complex turns of phrase on the darker title track ("The sunlight's making me feel paranoid/ I look outside and see the world at war").

Elefant have a few dates remaining on their U.S. tour; then they're taking their show overseas for a European trek that kicks off December 1. Another North American tour is expected to start early next year.

"If you come watch our show," Garcia said, "you'll see we don't really hide behind light and smoke machines. It's just us being bare-boned up there, bringing the record to life."