Saturday double: First Aid Kit at the Cedar, White Rabbits at Triple Rock

Except for the fact that I wound up having to park on the other side of I-94 – what's with the U of M closing its big Cedar-Riverside garage when it's only half-full? – Saturday night was a great night of music on the West Bank area of Minneapolis. Two touring acts surpassed the buzz-band stage and moved into proven status with their latest local gigs, which took place on opposite sides of the street.

FIRST AID KIT: Adorable can be a double-edged word to use with a young band, but there's no better one to describe 1990s-born Swedish sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg and their sold-out 85-minute set at the Cedar Cultural Center. From their '60s hippie-chic dresses to the way they madly flipped their straight, long hair around (think: Jan Brady in a metal band), they were obviously cute to look at. Then there was the cuddliness of being a sister act and the fact that their dad was working the soundboard for them, embarrassing them at one point when he yelled out something at them in Swedish. And he wasn't the only one yelling at them in their native tongue, either.

"We can see why so many Swedish people came [to Minnesota], because we feel very at home here," Johanna said early in the show. The sweetest Swede moment came later when they covered Fever Ray's "When I Grow Up," whose originator Karin Dreijer Andersson of the Knife fame helped discover First Aid Kit (they also stripped down Patti Smith's "Dancing Barefoot" in the encore).

Most charming of all, the Söderbergs' music felt like one giant hug that the crowd happily got swept into. Backed only by a drummer, the sisters kept their songs stripped to acoustic guitar and keyboards, and thus their shimmering harmonies were out front and center. People audibly sighed in contentment mid-set when they got to their ode to classic country couples, "Emmylou," a song now in steady rotation at 89.3 the Current. Even better was the song that came next, "New Year's Eve," another highlight from the new Mike Mogis-produced record, "Lion's Roar." In that one, Klara played autoharp (an even sweeter tribute to June Carter Cash) and Johanna showed off her lyrical prowess ("Gotta stop looking at things like they're black and they're white. / Gotta write more songs, treat my friends better / Got to stop worrying about everything to the letter").

Best of all was "Ghost Town," for which the duo truly unplugged and stood at the edge of the stage, the only sound being the crowd singing along to the chorus. It was the first time I'd seen anybody floor a room into silence so beautifully going back to when Alejandro Escovedo did the same thing at the Cedar about eight years ago. And he's nowhere near as cute.

WHITE RABBITS: It's taken three albums, but this Brooklyn-via-St.-Louis quintet has found its groove. Or at least White Rabbits found it late Saturday night at the Triple Rock, and the band didn't let up until the nearly sold-out crowd went home feeling a little shell-shocked. The show felt like one long percussive drilling, with the dueling drummers working themselves deeply into fans' heads – starting out especially heavily with the opener "Heavy Metal," which also kicks off the new disc, "Milk Famous."

Around those constantly pulsating rhythms were co-leaders Greg Robberts' and Stephen Patterson's jagged, moody but never too mopey melodic riffing, which at times were potent enough to almost substitute for the lack of a local Radiohead show so far this millennium. The most Radiohead moment was the slower, seething "Back for More" early in the set. There were some Spoon-like moments, too, including "The Salesman (Tramp Life)." But that too-easy comparison -- after Spoon frontman Britt Daniel produced WR's last album -- mostly proved overstated Saturday.

I can't overstate how tightly the band nailed the frazzled new single, "Temporary," near the end of the set. That one was soon followed by the aptly named earlier single, "Percussion Gun," a shoo-in for the finale. "Lionesse" added an even fiercer tone to the finale. Suffice it to say I had ample pep in my stride on the long walk back to my car.