The House of Sweden throws killer -- and very popular -- late-night parties with DJs and live music a few times a year, which bring out very cool (and very indie) crowds with skinny jeans, scarves, asymmetrical haircuts and white Converse. As part of the Swedish embassy, it also hosts free concerts featuring Sweden's finest musical acts. These have ranged from indie-folk troubadour Jose Gonzales's standing-room-only lunchtime performance earlier this year to classical recitals. If your tastes edge toward the indie-rock end, you're in for a treat this week, as the Georgetown waterfront is the site of back-to-back events on Monday and Tuesday. Both concerts start at 9 p.m. and require an RSVP to rsvp-hos@foreign.ministry.se, so hurry up: admission is limited.

First up is Hello Saferide and Firefox AK, an unlikely musical pairing. Firefox AK is the nom de guerre of Andrea Kellerman, a Stockholm-based singer whose time spent in Berlin explains her shift away from guitars to synthy, retro-electro sound on her new record "If I Were a Melody." Fans of the Knife and other indie-dance stars like Annie will love Kellerman's hot-and-cold sound, which goes from crazy dancefloor to introspective bedroom without losing the hooks or groove. Headlining is Hello Saferide, also from Stockholm, but singer Annika Norlin's strong, jangly sound is steeped in Americana and folk -- more shades of Wilco and Kirsty McColl than Abba or other Swedish exports. The lyrics are often dark, focusing on relationships gone wrong -- the driving single "Anna" is a litany of accomplishments that the singer's daughter could have completed, from learning to play sports to winning the Nobel Prize, but ends with "I'm real sorry Anna you never got to be -- because your daddy moved on and he left me." Not really a party tune, that one, but certainly attention-grabbing.

-- Fritz Hahn (October 2008)