Before he created a band and got big, singer Ezra Koenig had the idea of making his own vampire movie, inspired by cult classic “The Lost Boys”. While the movie project never materialized (making a movie is really hard), the name he came up with stuck around.
The movie would have been set in Cape Cod (which was a location that comes up a few times on the band’s first album, “Vampire Weekend”) and would have had a character named Walcott, a name that appeared on another song on the album. The band is known for its world-music influences and is one of the current frontrunners in the alternative rock scene.
Death Cab for Cutie
Unsurprisingly, music is big in the lives of musicians, which ends up in band names inspired by other bands. Such is the case with Death Cab for Cutie, who got their name from the fab four themselves: The Beatles.
The band's front-man Ben Gibbard said that the band's moniker came from The Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour". During the movie, a band named the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band played a tune called “Death Cab for Cutie.” The name stuck with Gibbard. But, he's since said he would have picked a more obvious reference if he could go back in time.
Linkin Park
Some band name meanings have a meaning that is a little bit more mundane. For this band, it's Lincoln Park in Santa Monica, California. Founding band member Chester Bennington used to drive past the part on his way to the studio. With a little bit of spelling creativity, this band was ready to start producing.
Linkin Park combined rap and rock to help forge the nu-metal genre. Before they found this name from such an unassuming place, they were known as both Xero and Hybrid Theory. The band has been on hiatus for several years, due to the unfortunate death of Bennington.
Daft Punk
There was once a band named Darlin'. All the way back in 1993, they released a song called “Cindy So Loud,” and in the Melody Maker column that was about singles, writer Dave Jennings described the song as “daft punky thrash.” Two of the members of Darlin' (which got its own name from a Beach Boys song), Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, thought the phrase was killer enough to become the name of the new project they were working on.
Multiple decades, multiple albums, and multiple Grammys later, Daft Punk is a huge name in the international music scene, and the listening public has all but forgotten Darlin'.
30 Seconds to Mars
Jared Leto, who got picked out of a hat to play the Joker on "Suicide Squad", had his first brush with fame when he founded the band 30 Seconds to Mars (He was also in "Fight Club").
Leto and his crew were trying to come up with the right kind of punchy, energetic name for an in-your-face rock band when they found a thesis from a former Harvard professor. It suggested that the human race is, thanks to an exponential technology curve, only thirty seconds to Mars compared to the length of history. That's the story according to bassist Matt Wachter.