The Civil Wars at the Ryman Auditorium, 1/12/2012

Most bands take decades to reach the Ryman Auditorium. The Civil Wars took months.

Barton Hollow (pronounced “holler,” southern style) was released in February 2011, kicking off a busy year that included mounting buzz and around-the-clock touring. Without a major label to help them out, the band sold more than 200,000 copies of their debut and remained on the road constantly, earning a few Grammy nominations along the way. Returning to Nashville last week, the city where Joy Williams and John Paul White wrote their first song together, felt like a much-deserved victory lap, and setting up shop at the Ryman -- the creme de la creme of Music City venues -- was the best way for the Civil Wars to celebrate.

The two took the stage on Thursday night in their signature get-ups: a black suit and bow tie for White, who looked like Johnny Depp at a formal dinner, and a simple black dress for Williams. Apart from a row of guitars and one grand piano, the stage was bare. The Civil Wars left us with no choice but to focus on them -- their voices, their chemistry, the way Williams weaves her hands through the hand as though she’s conducting every melody line -- but they hardly needed help holding our attention. The two were riveting, their voices rising and falling in identical patterns, their faces registering every ounce of hurt in the songs’ lyrics. The Civil Wars don’t write happy songs, but it’s hard not feel uplifted when musicians are so pitch-perfect, so in-step with each other’s harmonies, so genuinely happy to play a hometown gig. By the time they brought their boot-stomping title track -- maybe the closest thing the Civil Wars will ever have to a rock anthem -- to a close, the crowd had already climbed to its feet for a standing ovation. And the show wasn’t even haflway over.

Maybe you’ve heard about Taylor Swift’s cameo on “Safe and Sound,” an icy lullaby that will appear later this year on the “Hunger Games” soundtrack. Swift was perfectly pleasant -- “This is so sold out right now,” she guffawed, staring at the audience with the same “oh my GOD ya’ll!” expression that graces her face every time she steps onstage -- but the Civil Wars still shone the brightest, even with Swift taking lead vocals on the song. Later, after an unplugged encore closed out the 90-minute set, everyone stumbled out of the Ryman and into the falling snow, as though the band had called in some favors with the weather Gods to ensure that everything, even the trip home, was storybook perfect.

There’s a person on stage with an African mask. He won’t say who he is but he’s thought to be a guy named Aaron Jerome, and he seems an awful lot like what this Aaron Jerome might have become with a little marketing savvy and a fairly radical sonic facelift. The mask has something to do with anonymity; there’s a message about authenticity he’s trying to get across to the music industry. Does any of this matter? No, not really. Is the music any good? It’s phenomenal.

For a long time in the world of dance music, a gimmick - typically some sort of head gear - has gone a long way. Daft Punk is the iconic example. The French duo donned large robot helmets for concerts and photo shoots in the early '90s as their infectious electro-house took over the world. More recently, Canadian producer Deadmau5 has taken on a giant mouse head for his shows.

Whoever is behind that African mask goes by the name SBTRKT ["subtract"] and began releasing music under that alias around 2009. SBTRKT has been making his way across the U.S., with a recent stop in Asheville for Halloween weekend's MoogFest. But recently, the producer was clearly happy to be in Chicago, the city where house music was born, playing for a youthful, party-hungry crowd on a Friday night for his second-to-last show of the U.S. run.

But while SBTRKT's music has caught on with the dubstep craze in America, his work features the type of vocalists who don't as neatly fit into the genre and its super-bassy American offshoots like Skrillex. The song "Wildfire" features the singer Yukimi Nagano, of the Gothenburg, Sweden, electro outfit Little Dragon, who also performs with Jose Gonzalez. "You're like a wildfire/ You got me rising high," Nagano sings on SBTRKT's self-titled album version of the song.

The Toronto rapper Drake took a liking to "Wildfire" and remixed it, adding an opening verse to the song's programmed drums and squiggly bassline. "If they kill me, bury me a legend," raps Drake at one point, before Nagano enters the song with one of its many hooks, singing, "I could bet all of the riches that I ever had."

During live performances, SBTRKT runs tracks of Nagano and Drake's vocals, which is a fact of life for a producer who sources material from disparate parties. Unlike many other electronic producers and DJs, though, SBTRKT plays a small drum set live during each song, getting up between or at the end of songs to tweak things on a laptop and mixer station in the center of the stage.

Both SBTRKT's album and live show feature Sampha, a British R&B vocalist who releases his own music on the Young Turks record label. Sampha has the kind of gorgeous voice that very few people are blessed with. In a different life, he could have been one of the great American soul singers of the '60s, though there's something definitively '90s R&B about the way his voice is always just on the edge of slipping into falsetto. "You giving me the coldest stare/ Like you don't even know I'm here," he sang on one of the duo's standout tracks, "Hold On." The ethereal quality of Sampha's voice was lost in the murky club atmosphere of Chicago's Bottom Lounge; but, perhaps, something was also gained.