The party at Stanton Public for the new compilation Dark Was the Night—a 32-track album featuring Beirut, Bon Iver, Grizzly Bear and more—was already jam-packed, but when a Bright Eyes track came on, I began contently contemplating suicide.

Heather Macintyre—a bubbly 23year-old brunette record label employee with wrist tattoos—told me that was exactly the point. She said happily, “Isn’t downbeat what’s cool these days?” I took a large gulp of Jameson to cheer myself up and agreed that suicide music had its place in the cycle. I asked Macintyre the difference between working for a major and an indie. “You get to sleep at night,” she quipped.

Despite a surfeit of indie kids filling up the small venue, I couldn’t help but notice Calvin Klein Eternity in the air.The aroma definitely wasn’t coming from Scott Devendorf—the Hunter S. Thompson-looking vocalist and guitarist of gloomy rock outfit The National—who was about to take control of the iPod. “I’m going to start off with something from Neu!” he told me as he stepped up to the DJ booth. Trying to keep the conversation going, I asked him what exactly the “Fake Empire”—the name of one of his group’s most popular songs— was. His eyes smiling behind his ’80s metal-rimmed glasses he said, “It’s just an emotional state of mind.” Not exactly a radical thesis, but sure.

I found myself debating the merits of Vampire Weekend with Euvin Webber, the stylish manager of The New Pornographers. “Yeah.They’re an indie band in that they’re a fluke,” he said thoughtfully. “They didn’t say we want to have music on the radio.” The what?

Carolyn Bieldtfelt, a post coed with a torn and cleavage-baring gray sweatshirt—a la Jennifer Beals—and her tipsy curly haired pal, Elissa Young, probably don’t use a radio either. Draining a glass of wine, Young said, “Indie labels are done!”With a sip from the pint of Blue Moon in her other hand she continued: “I think the downloading thing is going to bring it all back this year though.” Double fisting, huh? She answered with a shrug, “It’s Friday night.”