Arav Goswami always wanted to be a performer. As a kid, he felt more drawn to his favorite artists’ live shows than their recorded music—he’d watch videos of Queen, David Bowie, and Talking Heads concerts on YouTube all day long. He was enamored with the intricate details these artists put into their imagery: the clothes they wore, their color scheme, even the way they moved onstage. “I liked their music, but what really made me stick around and love them was who they were as performers,” Goswami says. “I loved the way they created a total image of themselves.”

Now Goswami is pursuing his dream. The 19-year-old freshman at American University currently fronts a psychedelic funk band called Argo and the Violet Queens. They’ve been playing shows around D.C. since 2022, but lately, he and his band have started to elevate their game. Headlining the Pocket on Feb. 15, they played into the event’s anti-Valentine’s Day theme with both their outfits and set list. That night, Goswami and guitarist Evan Novoa wore shiny dress shoes, black suit jackets, and white button-down shirts in order to look like “guys who got rejected at prom” as they sang covers of songs like ABBA’s “S.O.S.” and Toto’s “Georgie Porgy.”

Even at their Pie Shop show on Feb. 7—when they were missing bassist Erl Fantilaga due to illness—they captivated the audience as they leaned into a hard rock-oriented set list and swung themselves onstage with an energy that pulled everyone away from the bar and toward the stage. “We learn so much about ourselves and what we can do every show we do,” Novoa says. “It’s always going to change and it’s going to become more interesting each time around.”

Soon D.C. will get to see Argo and the Violet Queens’ biggest change yet. Goswami has big plans for the band starting with their upcoming show at Songbyrd on March 13. There, the band will unveil something they’ve been working on since December: a new experimental set involving stage props, visuals, choreography, and never-heard-before songs. “The new set is going to be everything,” Goswami says. “Our brand, music, and live shows will all be centered entirely around this.”

Conceptual is the word Goswami uses to describe the band’s new set. The idea is that the upcoming show will immerse the audience in a 30-minute world of the band’s creation with a clear beginning, middle, and end. The set will center around a mannequin wearing a suit with a functional television for a head. The TV will display everything from clips of silent films to advertisements from the 1950s. Band members, dressed in uniform, will manipulate the visuals in real time onstage.

Along with the mannequin, the band will play some new music that pulls from multiple genres and aesthetics from different time periods, including classic rock and psychedelic jazz. The idea of the experimental set and music is that it will all reflect the ways music has changed over time as both a medium and a commodity. As Goswami puts it, the mannequin can be seen as a stand-in for the concept of music while the band members’ manipulation represents how the music industry tries to control the art form. “I want our performances to spur some thought in our audience and make them delve deeper into our lyrics to figure out what they just saw,” he says. “But we’re intentionally leaving it abstract so that they interpret it in any way they want.”

Even Goswami’s fellow band members are still trying to figure out the meaning behind his vision. “A lot of these ideas are his and the influences are his to know,” drummer Samuel Tyson says. “We’re sort of finding it out with everyone else.”

Goswami hopes this new style of live performance will be the “total image” of Argo and the Violet Queens. This shift will also affect the way they post on social media and interact with listeners. Now, their online presence is like any other band—mainly posts announcing shows and releases—but over time it’ll increasingly become more aligned with the fictional world they aim to create during their live shows. Goswami still plans to release the band’s work on streaming platforms such as Spotify despite the fact that their songs are meant to be a critique on the ways music is distributed and consumed, but he wants to do this more for the band’s listeners than for profit. “I’m not doing any of this with the intention of growing our numbers or getting on playlists,” he says. “Instead of playing live shows to promote our recorded music, I want our recorded music to promote the live shows.”

Argo and the Violet Queens open for Aidan Leclaire at 8 p.m. on March 13 at Songbyrd. songbyrddc.com. $19.32.