"Moon Taxi" is an American indie-progressive rock band based in Nashville, Tennessee. The band was founded in 2006. Trevor Terndrup and Tommy Putnam attended high school together in Vestavia Hills, a suburb of Birmingham, AL, and played in a bluesy rock group known as Apex during their junior and senior years. Upon graduation in 2002, the two moved to Nashville, TN where they met fellow student and guitarist Spencer Thomson, and drummer David Swan, shortly following their arrival at Belmont. Together with Thomson and Swan the Quartet began jamming in freshman dorm rooms, quickly landing a gig as the backing band for local rap duo.

In the school years following, the group performed sparsely around Nashville and in college towns around the Southeast under the name Moon Taxi. After Swan graduated from Belmont in 2006, he left the band to pursue another career path.

Soon after, Moon Taxi commissioned drummer Tyler Ritter, of Birmingham, in fall 2006, and the quartet began writing and recording songs for a debut studio release. Keyboardist Wes Bailey, a native of Knoxville, TN, began sitting in with the band during local shows around the same time, and when Melodica was released in April 2007, Bailey was added as a permanent member, thus completing the current line-up.