When you close out 2012 by opening for The Killers on the Strip, what do you do for an encore? Eric Rickey is ready to find out.

Last year, the keyboardist for Las Vegas band Most Thieves went all-in on his other musical dream, designing and building a professional recording studio inside his friends’ Show Creators warehouse/robot factory on West Sunset Road. No sooner did the studio, now known as Electric Animal, open, than Rickey had quality local acts—Dusty Sunshine, Rusty Maples, The Clydesdale, A Crowd of Small Adventures—queuing up for a chance to get inside.

“There’s so many good bands here, and a lot of the network is really tight between all these musicians,” Rickey, 33, says. “To be a part of that, maybe be one of the links in the chain that helps get everybody connected … I feel extremely lucky.”

The studio, constructed in four months on a tight budget, feels inviting yet serious, and it’s already helped birth some impressive work, namely Most Thieves debut album Unnecessary Maps and recent Dusty and Rusty EPs. But while those projects share a level of quality, Rickey is quick to explain that he’s “not trying to establish a sound for the studio or for what I do. I just want to make sure those bands are getting what they want. I’m not claiming to be Phil Spector or Brendan O’Brien, but I feel like I can be an objective third ear for the artists. If there’s more potential there, we can help them find it.” –Spencer Patterson