Musicians from Moby to Phoenix understand that one of the most effective ways to get your music in front of a large audience these days is via TV commercials. Especially ones that have hey-you-gotta-see-this YouTube appeal.

Even fake bands do well. Case in point: You've seen the FreeCreditReport.com band, right? The pirate hats? The Renaissance fair? Funny stuff, but that was a band manufactured (and lip-syncing) for the ad campaign. The next one will be real. And maybe from Illinois. The Poets Dance, a rock band from Rockford, is one of four finalists vying for your vote this summer to be the next band hawking credit services.

To help launch the new FreeCreditScore.com, the Experian company -- which provides personal credit information for free once consumers have signed up for a paid credit-monitoring service -- conducted a nationwide talent search.

"The original band campaign started with a jingle I wrote three years ago in my basement," says Dave Muhlenfeld of the Martin Agency, which has produced the ads for Experian. "FreeCredit Score.com is a slightly different product, so we thought we'd bring in a new band, a band of actual musicians instead of people lip-syncing to session recordings. ... Each recording [in this new campaign] keeps the sonic characteristics and personality of the bands."

That's what attracted the Poets Dance to the project. The agency contacted the young musicians and asked them to audition at the House of Blues.

"Our manager asked us almost joking: 'So you guys wanna try to be the new Free Credit Score band?' " says the band's Jarrett Kimberly. "Once we were satisfied that it was something that wasn't asking us to be something that wasn't us, we were like, 'Yeah, sure, why not?' "

This summer, the band found itself in Los Angeles in the same studio where "We Are the World" was recorded in 1985. They laid down their 30-second tune for the ad, then bumped into Eddie Van Halen in the hall.

"They have a really cool sound," Muhlenfeld says of the Poets Dance, which features two synthesizer players. "It's like Boys Like Girls or the Killers."

The band survived an initial online voting to be one of four finalists, with New York's I Love Monsters, L.A.'s Evolove and Detroit's the Victorious Secrets. (Three Chicago bands -- Helicopters, BC and the Personnel -- were semifinalists.) Voting on the four videos continues until Aug. 9 at FreeCreditScore.com.

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