Make a wish -- you never know.

That's even if you're an art pop band toiling away in the suburbs of Toronto, such as Milton, Ont.'s The Most Serene Republic.

A couple of years ago the band was honing its craft in Burlington and Brampton. Today they're selling out their own headlining gigs in Vancouver.

The icing on the cake? For Nick Greaves, it's having his band's debut, Underwater Cinematographer, released by Canadian indie rock hotbed Arts & Crafts.

"Out of any label that we would want to be on -- that would be the first," says Greaves of the label, also home to such acclaimed acts as Stars, Feist and Broken Social Scene.

He agrees Republic fit nicely in with the rest of those acts, coming at pop music, as they do, from an entirely original and challenging place.

"It's just all in the the sound," says Greaves.

"If there's one label we could really compare to it would be (Arts & Crafts), because of the acts they have on it.

"We have the pop melodies and the interesting production value, and I think it fits in the whole aspect of the label."

Of course, when they signed to the label, there were those voices -- predominantly from the T.O. scene -- who questioned whether they deserved it and others who merely dismissed them as a ripoff of their labelmates.

Greaves admits they weren't sure of what to make of it, but says lately, they've won over many converts.

"When we first came out, there were mixed reviews and so we didn't know what to think of the scene," he says.

"But when we came back from the Stars tour and played the Olympic Island show (in June with Modest Mouse, Metric, and Broken Social Scene), that really changed our minds on what Toronto thinks of us.

"We got an overwhelming response."

The Most Serene Republic play The Warehouse tonight with Pretty Girls Make Graves.