Quirky Japanese electronic pop trio Wednesday Campanella's singer goes only by her stage name, KOM_I (pronounced "koh-mu-eye"), and she has a practical reason for not revealing her real name.

"If I go by my real name, the next time I go to a clinic and they call my name, the other people will recognise me and I try to avoid that," the 24-year-old explains via a translator in a telephone interview from Tokyo.

Wednesday Campanella will play their first gig in Singapore at the Laneway Festival at Gardens by the Bay on Saturday. The band, together with rapper Kohh, are the first Japanese acts on the Laneway line-up.

A rising act in the indie scene in Japan, the band are not content with just the home crowd - they are also raring to take on the world.

It is the reason the band took on their current name for audiences outside of Japan and started giving English titles to their recent songs. Back home, they still go by their old moniker - Suiyoubi no Campanella - which they have been using since they formed in 2012.

"At that moment, we didn't really think about doing music outside of Japan," singer and rapper KOM_I says of their early days. "When we started to go abroad to do our music, we decided to change it to Wednesday - it's easier outside of Japan."

Both names are a reference to the day the group have their weekly project meetings.

While the band have been billed at major music festivals in Japan such as Summer Sonic and Rock In Japan, they played their first overseas show only early last year, at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference & Festivals in Texas, the United States.

They have since played in San Francisco and Taiwan.

"In the US, we get a really different reaction from the audiences," says KOM_I. "Whenever they want to dance, they dance. The audiences in Japan, I need to unfreeze them, like ice. I need to make them relaxed first and then they can enjoy the show."

While the band also comprise producer Hidefumi Kenmochi and director Dir.F, only KOM_I appears in their live shows, music videos and promotional materials. The other two prefer to remain behind the scenes.

"It's like I'm doing karaoke on a stage," she says of appearing alone at their live shows.

Kenmochi and Dir.F first met in 2011 and the band were solidified the following year after they met KOM_I at a house party and invited her to be their singer.

They uploaded their early songs on YouTube and released a debut CD, Suiyoubi no Campanella Demo 1, that same year and started gigging in 2013.

The band had several releases, including five albums, under independent label Tsubasa Records. This was before they signed on to a major record company, Warner Music, which released the latest album UMA, last year.

The title is an acronym of Unidentified Mysterious Animals and each song is named after mostly mythical creatures such as the phoenix, kraken and yeti.

"With the album, we wanted to create like a zoo with animals. Listening to the track is like opening a door and finding each of the creatures behind it. Listening to the album is like an adventure that nobody has been on."