Tuesday night "felt like a Friday" at the Paramount last night with a show that ended in time to get everyone home in time to get a full night's sleep before reporting to homeroom on Wednesday morning. Although unnaturally happy Brooklynites Matt & Kim generously attributed this T.G.I.F. transformation to Seattle's especially game attitude, I think that much of the credit goes to the three bands who brought an surgical strike of electro-pop targeted directly at the bouncing region of the lizard brain to the Paramount's grand stage. Openers Icona Pop took the most gradual build into dance attack, saving "I Love It" to close their set, breaking a few times to turn up the lights, chat up the crowd, and get a look at the audience, perhaps to see if there were any Hannah Hovarth inspired mesh pennies, shirt trading, or glowing fashion in the house. (I can't confirm or deny, but there definitely was a Griz Coat). Matt & Kim dove headlong into plastering smiles on thousands of faces, pounding keyboards and drums in front of paired LCD screens showing their faces, words of encouragement, or synesthetic fireworks. By the end of the set, they'd staged a little "Harlem Shake" video, cheerleaded from atop multiple pieces of their equipment, concluding with Kim strapping on a medical boot to protect a twisted ankle while she walked and danced on top of the crowd. Passion Pit were similarly relentless in driving the audience to test the structural integrity of the venue's floating floor: always dapper Michael Angelakos wind sprinting across the stage all manic pixie dream vocals above the band's affectingly ingenious pulsing sound sculptures. Filling the air with bubbles during "Take A Walk" and flooding it with candy colored lights throughout, they set slowed to breath-catching pace only during "Constant Conversations" and when they opened their encore with a rarely-played track ("Where I Come From") they'd written for romantic vampires. Of course, they ended an evening of happy sounding sad songs with enduring hit "Little Secrets", finishing just as a line of chaperones pulled up cars on Pine Street.

More pictures of all of the bands and some of the crowd after the jump.

Icona Pop

Matt & Kim

Passion Pit

Superfans