We’ve been digging Noon:30 for a while, but we’ve never heard the D.C./New York group like this. The band, now a two-piece, stopped by the City Paper parking deck last week to record a short set, but the two songs they played—-“The Dream Architect” and “Peter Pan”—-were nothing like the group’s Pylon-esque post-punk that we wrote about in 2009. The new material is dreamy and minimalistic and loud when it needs to be; it also doesn’t really bother with choruses, and it works. This was a nice surprise.

Be sure to catch Noon:30 Sept. 17 at La Casa with Tereu Tereu and Imperial China.