Holy Fuck. It sounds like the name of a Marilyn Manson album. Or, at the least, it sounds like the name of a band that has confrontation on the agenda, a band whose music is abrasive enough to make you feel as uncomfortable listening to it as you would wearing one of their t-shirts to any civilized supermarket.

The guys of Holy Fuck rock out.

M.I.A. joins the crowd.

It’s not like that, though. When the four Canadians in Holy Fuck took the stage at the Aragon Ballroom Friday night to open for M.I.A., confrontation seemed far from the band members’ minds. Instead, Holy Fuck worked to make incarnate the literal meaning of their name: When they’re at their best, the band’s glistening, grooving punk/kraut/techno anthems aim to make you feel screwed by a divine being. It’s always accessible, and it’s often awe-inspiring.

It’s weird that there’s no one out there right now making music quite like Holy Fuck, because there’s honestly not a lot to it. You start with spiky live drumbeat, add in some cyborg synth melodies and atmospheric sounds effects, anchor it with a catchy bass line, and then let those elements play with each other for a few minutes, expanding and contracting and building into gorgeous cacophonies. The sound mix at the Aragorn wasn’t perfect, with the scuzzy rhythm section overpowering the hypnotic keyboard sounds, but the crowd didn’t mind: They were there to dance, and Holy Fuck provided the beats to get the sweat flowing. With a little more exposure, I could see the band entering the Daft Punk/Justice/Ghostland Observatory/whatever pantheon of “electronica you’ll hear at frat parties.” If that becomes the case, more power to them — they’ve already got Rachel Ray on their side.

Though M.I.A.’s got a slightly tamer name, she certainly courts confrontation more readily than her opener. In fact, the genius of 2007’s Kala was in the way it championed the underpowered — women, children, the third world — using the historical weapon of the underpowered: taunting. It was an album filled with kids’ voices, weird disses and annoying nonsense — “nah nanana,” “neeny-neeny” — juxtaposed with gunshots and ridiculously infectious dance beats.

So, it’s not that surprising that there were times at the concert when it seems like all she wanted to do is piss off her fans: First there was the interminable wait for her act to start, then there was the interminable intro video with some bald faux-revolutionary barking at the audience, then there was the fact that her set list and visuals were nearly identical to the ones at her show in Chicago six months ago, and then there was the interminable wait for her to come back for the encore. But, of course, the crowd ate it all up. All the stalling actually seemed like an extension of her live act’s defining dynamic: build up and release. Nearly ever song got a bit stretched out and diced up on stage, with the DJ playing certain tracks’ opening beats for a full minute while M.I.A. and her two dancing cohorts shouted slogans at the audience. Once the actual song (or chorus or bridge) actually kicked in, the results were waves of ecstatic gyrating and whooping on the floor.

Sonically, M.I.A.’s voice was often nearly inaudible and the booming beats sounded more like clatter, yet still you couldn’t ask for a better connection between performer and audience: She invited all the girls on stage to dance for “10 Dollar,” threw out noise-making horns so the masses could contribute to the din, and nearly started a riot within a few seconds of jumping into the crowd. Even with the conspicuous absence of Kala singles “Jimmy” and “Bird Flu” from the set list, there was nothing for the sweat-drenched euphoric participants to complain about by the time it was all over: With M.I.A., entertainment doesn’t come in spite of frustration, but rather because of it.

Photos by Spencer Kornhaber / North by Northwestern.