Hanging with the kiwis at Pianos.

The flipflops on the guy ahead of me seemed to beat out the happy rhythm: "A jun-ket, a jun-ket." My first-ever p.r. junket, or at least the first one I can remember afterward. At Pianos on Ludlow St., which has its hip look all worked out but seems serenely schizophrenic in terms of programming, meaning you can expect to hear anything and everything both upstairs and down and possibly people are not turning up solely for the music.

This particular Monday night, the theme is New Zealand. And in the crowd, a sleek, eye-catching beauty who looks exactly like a brown-skinned elf. Where are the pointy ears? But it's his girlfriend who's the New Zealander. I couldn't tell until I leaned forward to hear her accent above the incredible din (that's the din of "meet-and-greet," not actual musical performance).

"People from New Zealand are easy to pick out in a crowd," says one, who's writing up tonight's festivities for the press back home. "They look different, ethnically. They have a different kind of facial structure."

"They have big cheeks!" chimes in Mr. Elf. A girl perched on a barstool is wearing jeans cut so low I can see her entire?not just part of it, but the whole thing?thong.

"Aren't a lot of people in New Zealand from the UK?" I asked the native (note: will not use "kiwi" unless referring to the fruit).

"Yes," he replies, a shade defensively. "It is a very young country, you know. Only 150 years old."

And to put things in perspective, it only takes 15,000 in sales for an album to be certified platinum in New Zealand. Yet there are these breakout acts. The Datsuns. The Chills. The Clean.

"You should write about how none of these bands sounds anything like Split Enz," says J.R. Taylor, waving a drink he may actually have paid for. He arrived too late for the complimentary New Zealand wine and vodka and a protein-fest of chicken/mussels/clams/lamb. Let us now praise New Zealand lamb. Suspiciously, it is from something called "Atkins Ranch." Even in death, the good doctor is everywhere.

Once everyone is smashed and happy, the music begins. WAI takes its name from the Maori word for water. Two female vocalists, two men on electronics and percussion. I didn't love WAI on disc, but the live performance wins me over. By the end it doesn't matter that I understand only one word of Maori (see above) or that the whole electronica thing doesn't really come off. These women are strong. They're performing rather than posing. They have really good voices, and when they're doing tag-team rapping in Maori, or when the whole group does a traditional four-part harmony/percussion number without electronics for their encore, something special is happening. I don't know if it will translate, but the crowd here tonight is going absolutely nuts.

Next up is Pine, a mopey college-rock kind of band. They're a bass-less trio, tight and competent with a shimmering sound, singer on snare drum, girl keyboards player who takes off her trucker hat before going onstage. Pines know what they're doing and do it well. They have catchy songs, they're attractive in a low-key kind of way. Still, their set goes on longer than it should (in fairness, one of the originally scheduled acts has canceled, and someone seems to have told Pine they are responsible for picking up the slack). They begin to seem kind of whiny. My plus-one takes off.

Finally, King Kapisi takes the stage. He's the best-known of the acts, a hiphop MC and instrumentalist who's achieved some name recognition outside New Zealand, playing on bills with Public Enemy, the Fugees, Moby, even Janet Jackson. Which is why it's been refreshing to see him mingling with the crowd all night, digital camera slung around his neck like any other tourist, cheering on the other bands. The King is lyrically talented and exuberant, and the crowd is roused again.

A taller cousin of Mr. Elf sidles up to me. "Are you, er, a native?" he asks. I must have big cheeks.

No, I am an American, I explain, an American music critic. Still confusion reigns.

"Is this an Australian club or something?"

How nice that someone can't instantly place a New York nightlife event. Happy, I head back to Brooklyn.