Looking nervously around the shadowy stage, Charlie Otto looks just like David Byrne.

Then again, it’s hard not to with his bobbing head peaking out of the iconic bloated suit that’s become a symbol of the Talking Heads’ singer/songwriter.

Still, the 26-year-old founder of This Must Be the Band, the Chicago-based Talking Heads tribute performing tonight at Otto’s Niteclub, 118 E. Lincoln Highway, does a startlingly accurate impersonation.

“I think people just say that because I’m a thin white guy, and that good enough for them and that’s good enough for me,” Otto said. “If you think that’s all it takes to look like Byrne…then I got it.”

But it’s not just the look; Otto has the voice, the soulful and pensive yelp that carried the funky post-punk hits “Psycho Killer,” “Life During Wartime,” and “Once in a Lifetime” through the late 70’s and 80’s.

The voice, Otto says, took years of practice, singing along to Talking Heads’ records on his drive to work.

“Actually, I wasn’t going to be a singer, I was just going to play guitar and sure enough the first thing I had to do was look for a singer, and I realized pretty quickly that wasn’t going to happen so I started working on the voice myself,” Otto said. “I tried other people for some of the parts and they were saying I didn’t really sound like David Byrne at all so it took about a year before I even found one guy.”

Deriving their name from the 1983 single “This Must Be the Place,” This Must Be the Band has been playing Talking Heads covers throughout the Midwest for three years, sometimes for up to five hours at a time. Performing for that duration can take a toll on a singer’s vocal chords, so the length itself is a feat.

“Singing lessons are a major part of that,” Otto said. “And also I’ve worked at it for years and really built up to playing two or three shows a weekend.”

On Oct. 9, the band will be recreating the Talking Head’s renowned “Stop Making Sense” 1984 concert and film at Park West in Chicago. However, Otto said the show this Friday will not feature the films theatrics.

“It’s pretty lively and the backup singers really help out to get the crowd going, but other than that we’re not doing ‘Stop Making Sense,'” Otto said. “But if the crowd’s good enough, I’ll bring out the suit.”