Pop music ran rampant as Mates of State took the Maintenance Shop stage Saturday night. Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel, a married couple from San Francisco, introduced their brand of minimalist pop music, a complex sequence of drums and keyboards.

Hammel and Gardner sang in harmony while often employing different lyrics sung simultaneously over the top of each other, producing a circular whirl of upbeat musical ramblings that could make any depressed lyric sound optimistic.

“It was bizarrely awesome,” says Tim Gass, senior in advertising. “I don’t see many bands with just organs and drums. They’re like the more fun cousins of the White Stripes.”

The band played a 45-minute set featuring a mix of tunes from both “Our Constant Concern” and “My Solo Project.”

Being in a band with your spouse may not sound like a very sensible idea, but the Mates don’t appear to have any complaints. During the set, Gardner and Hammel watched each other’s every move, seemingly unable to peel their eyes off each other for more than a minute at a time.

“I liked the way that they seemed to flirt with each other the entire show,” Gass says. “They kept looking over at the other waiting for the other one to look back at them.”

Before Mates of State was Dear Nora, a solo acoustic act from San Francisco. The more than 65 people in attendance sat attentively in chairs along the wall and in a semicircle around the stage as Dear Nora gently whispered her guiltless confessions into the microphone.

“She seemed really gentle, like fragile in a way,” Gass says. “She did a show that made me feel like, `If I hung out with her and made her cry I’d feel like the worst person in the world.'”