Who: Dirty Projectors

From: Brooklyn, New York

Reason to care: One of indie pop's most fertile streams connects formal composition techniques to the do-it-yourself practices of the underground. The Dirty Projectors are big fish in that water. The band is really a chamber ensemble performing the works of Dave Longstreth, a Yale music school graduate who's also a self-taught expert in Dylan and John Coltrane. Longstreth translates his knowledge of harmonic theory and rock's rougher magic into songs that are beautifully tangled up and always mutating. There are  runaway melodic lines, female voices in modal counterpoint, and rhythms that run from Africa to Williamsburg. Listening to Dirty Projectors is like watching a spooky animated film like "Coraline,"  or reading Lydia Davis' short short stories: enchanting, disturbing, impossible to forget.

Listen: Matthew Lessner's curious video for "Stillness is the Move" plays on two sides of the band. The pastoral setting and Robin Hood outfits highlight the elements that connect to old forms -- that madrigal feeling. But the choreography in which Amber Coffman, Angel Deradoorian and Haley Dekle indulge is pure girl group, connecting to the song's Motown tinge, which may have been what atttracted Solange Knowles to it (Beyonce's sis covered it last year.)

 

Fun Fact: The women singers in Dirty Projectors learn Longstreth's convoluted, stop-start harmony parts by ear. “Usually, Dave sits down with the three of us and will teach us the parts individually,” Coffman said in a recent interview . “It takes hours and hours to remember some of the stuff."

What's Next: The group presents "The Getty Address," a Longstreth composition it brought to Disney Hall in February, at London's  Barbican arts center in June.

-- Ann Powers

Leading his band Dirty Projectors on Saturday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall, David Longstreth kept folding his long, gangly frame toward the floor, as though he were trying to avoid being noticed.

The Brooklyn group released one of last year’s most celebrated indie-rock discs, "Bitte Orca," and Longstreth, one presumes, has long since grown used to playing in front of the type of crowd that views a concert as an excellent opportunity to tweet. But the seated Disney audience entertained no such distractions, listening with laser-like focus as Longstreth and his bandmates, along with the New York chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound, performed Dirty Projectors’ 2005 album "The Getty Address."

Halfway through the hour-long piece, the singer-guitarist seemed to seek refuge from the spotlight by pulling a hood over his head.

As uncomfortable as he may be with such concentrated attention, Longstreth writes music that demands it: Described by the composer as an opera that "examines the question of what is wilderness in a world completely circumscribed by highways," "The Getty Address" jams together darting string arrangements, thudding percussive grooves, elaborate vocal harmonies and quasi-Asian guitar riffs; the libretto follows a fictional character named Don Henley (based on the Eagles member) on a complicated journey across the American psycho-ecological landscape.

Last year "Stillness Is the Move," an irresistible avant-funk cut from "Bitte Orca," became something of an indie-scene hit for Dirty Projectors; it even earned a widely circulated cover by Beyoncé's sister, Solange Knowles. But "The Getty Address" offers a bold reminder of Longstreth’s background in (and continuing commitment to) experimental art music in all of its challenging structural complexity.

There’s a funny throwaway moment in the middle of Dirty Projectors’ new single, “Ascending Melody.” As the band’s three female singers hit an appropriately rising lead line atop an atonal guitar clamor, frontman David Longstreth warbles “Rise above!” -- a shout out to his band’s breakthrough album, a thorough deconstruction of Black Flag’s “Damaged.”

It’s a witty little joke in and of itself, but it also heralds a new turn for this odd band. Their singularly screwy sound has become popular enough for them to get a bit meta.

The two tracks on the “Ascending Melody” single (or, heh, a “Digital 7-inch,” as they put it on the free download site) sidle up nicely with the rest of their “Bitte Orca” album, released last year to widespread acclaim. More bands should put out stand-alone singles in the interim between albums, even if these tracks scratch a now-familiar itch.