We don’t always get to review bands at a this massive festival that we are intimately familiar with, sometimes we simply get thrown into the fray. Such is the case of my attendance of the Dirty Projectors Sunday evening set at the Red Marquee.

Coming in, I had done a bit of research into the band, I knew they had a good sized following mostly from late 2000s work, I knew their previous album was a personal, depressing musical expression of the lead singer David Longstreth’s breakup with former bandmate and girlfriend Amber Coffman. I knew their new album was supposedly more chipper and danceable, and I also knew Dirty Projectors were routinely placed in the genre of hipster, indie pop-rock.

That last piece of info scared me a bit, but I was willing to give our Brooklyn gang a shot. I was pleasantly surprised after I did. The set was high energy, the crowd was large and overly supportive and hipster experimentalism was kept to a minimum. The tunes were all musical, the band seemed really in sync with both each other and the audience. The band’s new Keyboardist and vocalist, Kristin Slipp took to the mic for a couple tunes near the end of the set and everyone seemed delighted.

I don’t know what the band sounded like live before with Amber Coffman, nor do I know the sad music it caused the band to churn out, what I do know is that for the group’s hour long set Sunday night, it was a celebration. It was highly instrumental with a little sampled, artificial weirdness thrown in for good measure. But mostly it was musicians looking like they were up on stage loving what they were doing if Longstreth was still wounded he certainly didn’t show it. The set was jumpy, poppy feel good indie pop and in my books that’s the best kind of indie pop there is.