Before Handsome Furs took the stage, the crowd slowly thickened as openers US English and Magical Beautiful rolled through their sets.

Magical Beautiful worked to warm the venue with surfer, dub-step beats mixed with heady, space jamming. While the Chicago quartet pleased the audience with focused hooks and lyrics, a few of their jams meandered. During the spacey lulls, the crowd stepped up to test out Off Broadway's remodeled bar, which now stands about a third of its original venue-spanning size. One bartender said it is an improvement because "it opens up the venue, allows us to serve people quicker and get better tips."

During Magical Beautiful's set, Boeckner and Perry stood outside Off Broadway and shot the shit with fans and friends about alternate reality games, while smoking cigarettes and drinking water.

When Handsome Furs arrived on stage, Perry worked her ass off twisting knobs, dropping synth samples and dancing harder than most loop operators. In sequin-studded high heels she stomped against the ground with force enough to punch holes in the floor of the stage. While Handsome Furs' set was a little short and featured a few too many pre-recorded loops, the break-neck pace of the songs on their newest record, "Sound Kapital," more than supported the short form of the set. If the set went much longer, Alexei might have expired from exhaustion.

The crowd was floored by Perry's stomping and gyrating, but didn't dance as much as one ought at a beat-filled, synth-adorned, alt-rock mash-up show. Perry led the charge, which revealed how stone-still most of the crowd remained. Handsome Furs were not discouraged as they humbly thanked the audience numerous times. "Sound Kapital" may feature less guitar than ever before, but Boeckner's occasional guitar parts rang out, as on the single "Repatriated." These incendiary little moments gave the audience a shot in the arm and conjured Wolf Parade, Boeckner's other project.

Highlights included the fuzzed-out opener of "When I get Back," which featured dual layered vocals, fizzy drum samples and claps, and a synth sample reminiscent of rolling through Europe on a Vespa. Boeckner's singular vocals wound around the punked-out "Damage" with diligence and trembling, unrestrained emotion. Perry bled into a blur as her hair whipped through the air amidst the red and green space lights. The guitar work on "All We Want, Baby, Is Everything" bounced atop a sparse beat as Boeckner offered Depeche Mode-like vocals mashed up with the American sound of Bruce Springsteen. The combination works surprisingly well with simple, pre-recorded synth hooks and stamped-out loops. "Memories of the Future," "Bury Me Standing," and "Radio Kaliningrad" were excellent, as Handsome Furs maintained fidelity to the record with ease.

After a nine-song set, Handsome Furs dove into "Legal Tender," the first of two encore songs, which featured distorted guitar verses and a stripped down, beat-helmed chorus, "That's legal tender, that's legal tender!" The iTunes exclusive, "Agony," presented shimmering synth and Boeckner repeating "agony" with finesse and feeling over drop-time beats and distorted bass.

Handsome Furs' set was high-energy, up-tempo and affecting. It was a bit of a bummer that few songs from the debut record "Plague Park" were performed, but that's to be expected on a tour designed for pushing the duo's newest release.

Nonetheless, Handsome Furs more than impressed the audience: Fans may not have danced much, but they doted on Perry's own moves and Boeckner's whirring, sympathetic vocals. After the show, the duo climbed back into their maroon "Mom Van," as Perry labeled it, and headed south towards Austin.