Post sponsored by Indio Beer.

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When I arrived to cover the first Hola Indio event at the Double Door last month, I arrived promptly at nine where I found no line and was told to come back in a few minutes. This wasn’t a problem to be repeated as there was already a line stretching out the door by the same time this Friday.

Not only was there a healthy crowd lined up for the cold Indio bottles but people were here early to see a slew of paintings hung up around the venue from the Mexican Museum of Art, for whom the event raised over $1600.

The first act of the night was Chicago’s own DJ Chrissy Muderbot. If you’ve never heard of him, he’s gained notoriety for, among other things, putting out a mixtape a week for the better part of a calendar year. Although he’s slowed a bit in terms of musical output, it was obvious Friday night that he hadn’t lost any of that manic energy.

Murderbot announced his arrival onstage will a descending wall of bass followed quickly by some kick drum, turning the Double Door into a dance floor. Not content to pull a Girl Talk and hide behind a Macbook, DJ Murderbot had two honest-to-God turntables going all night, cranking out high octane jams that started at high energy and only went up from there.

The more adventurous souls let their freak flags fly on the dance floor, including and adventurous pair who spent the better part of a song mere inches off the floor. Others were happy to chill in the back, taking in the impressive dance scene as well as a DJ set that left 808s ringing in their ears even after he left the stage.

British Knights, a Chicago DJ team took over the turntables to keep the energy up between sets as people took the opportunity to grab a few remaining Indios (they were going fast) and relax between sets. People could post pictures of themselves at the show to a large video screen in the back by tagging them #HolaIndio which allowed for ideal digital people watching and showed a room full of revelers all doing their thing.

Headliner Dani Shivers’ Facebook page describes her music as simply “La muerte de la inocencia” (“The death of innocence”) and the cobwebs, black draping and a flashing skull that took over the stage as she set up certainly gave the room a Gothic pallor. At the same time, the scent of incense came wafting out as well giving the room a sweet hue. This perfumed darkness was the perfect setup for Shivers’ music as the Tijuana-based singer presented a string of sweet, lulling pop songs with a murderous heart made with just a few beats and some Casio keys.

This may not have been your typical night out. How often does an art museum throw a dance party? And the lineup itself certainly wasn’t conventional. As a friend said to me afterwards, “You mean Chrissy Murderbot is a guy, Dani Shivers is a girl and British Knights is one person?” But somehow when you get a group of people together all out to do their own thing, those odd elements combine to make an exhilarating evening.

The Barclays Center, the new home for the Brooklyn Nets and an ample venue for concerts, sporting events and more, is poised to bring new visitors to the heart of Brooklyn. However, throughout its entire planning and construction phase, the venue, and its developer Forest City Ratner Companies (FCRC), has been mired in controversy. From the use of eminent domain to obtain the land, to the circumvention of local officials and reaching out to the state, to the lack of available affordable housing units in the promised, yet to be be constructed, apartment towers and to the failure to produce the promised jobs, Forest City Ratner has not made a lot of local friends.

Thrill Jockey Records is almost old enough to drink. How time flies. The Chicago label, while likely not as frequently namechecked as your Merges or your Sub Pops, easily has a back catalog to rival those indie behemoths, as well as a rightful place beside them in curatorial excellence. Post-rock gods Tortoise and the Sea and Cake, eclectic electro-wizards Mouse on Mars, musical polymath Nobukazu Takemura, Kraut-revivalists Trans Am, current personal heroes and saviors of rock music Future Islands – I could go on. This is, in a word, impressive.

Indian music continues to impact Western audiences even as the influences of modern musical genres come to affect Indian sounds. The Karmeleons, a group that consists of DJ Nasha (who spins house music) U. Rajesh (an Indian classical mandolinist) and Greg Ellis (the drummer/percussionist from Juno Reactor). They were joined by Meetu Chilana, a vocalist who has worked with Cirque du Soleil for a set at Cielo, a club in New York, as the first event presented by Maharishi.

The group bridged the realms of Indian classical music and electronic house with their cohesive, uninterrupted set. The band performed for at least 45 minutes before giving DJ Nasha some time to spin and the other musicians some time to relax before they rejoined him once more. Ellis’s palms must have been raw from the constant rhythms he was producing but he looked blissfully engaged so it likely didn’t matter. DJ Nasha had on some crazy spectacles that rustled up images of Dr. Magoo combined with steampunk and, as he spun in the DJ booth, he swayed and cheered on the rest of the group. U Rajesh, brother to U. Srinivas also a classical mandolinist, worked his double necked instrument with such precision and clarity that he made clear his classical musicianship could apply to the electronic dance realm. Finally, Chilana likely raised some hairs at time with her theatrical cackles, but more often than not she was adding her strong voice to the already strong dance music lending it a bit of humanity. It didn’t hurt that the band chose to make their debut at Cielo, as the little club has a dazzling sound system.

Bob Mould’s Copper Blue was written “right over there on Richardson” he told the Williamsburg Park audience on a Friday night during a free performance of the full twenty-year old Sugar album along with many Hüsker Dü songs (with Craig Finn lending his voice to “Something I Learned Today”) and tracks from his latest solo release, Silver Age. The free show begins a short tour to major metropolitan areas in the US as Mould is seeing a resurgence of attention to albums with Sugar as a couple were re-released in deluxe editions in the past month.